The^buthof 
JamesWhitcomb  Rilqy 

Marcus  Dickey 


THE  YOUTH  OF 
JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 


THE  RILEY  YOUTH  AT  FOURTEEN 
Pencil  dm  wing  by  himself 


THE  YOUTH  OF 
JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Fortune's  way  with  the  Poet  from 
Infancy  to  Manhood 


By 
MARCUS  DICKEY 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  PAINTED 
UNDER  THE  POET'S  DIRECTION 

By  WILL  VAWTER 

AND  REPRODUCTIONS  OF  PHOTOGRAPHS 

DAGUERREOTYPES.  LETTERS  AND 

RARE  DOCUMENTS 


INDIANAPOLIS 

THE  BOBBS-MERRILL  COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 


COPYRIGHT  1919 
THE  BOBBS-MERHILL  COMPANY 


Printed  m  the  United  States  of  America 


OF 

BRAUNWORTH  &  CO. 

BOOK  MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN.  N.  V. 


A '/J 


Turn,  Fortune,  turn  thy  wheel, 

Turn  thy  wild  wheel 

Through  sunshine,  storm  and  cloud; 

Smile  and  we  smilef 

The  lords  of  many  lands; 

Frown  and  we  smile. 

The  lords  of  our  own  hands; 

For  man  is  man 

master  of  his  fate. 

— ALFRED  TENNYSON". 


FOREWORD 

When  Cromwell  sat  to  Sir  Peter  Leley,  he  said,  "I  desire 
you  will  use  all  your  skill  to  paint  my  picture  truly  like  me, 
and  not  flatter  me  at  all;  but  remark  all  those  roughnesses, 
pimples,  warts,  and  everything  as  you  see  me." 

This  famous  injunction  Eiley  quoted  to  a  reporter  who 
sought  his  opinion  on  biography.  The  poet  had  read  it,  for 
the  first  time,  when  a  youth,  in  the  preface  to  a  rare  and  much 
loved  set  of  old  books  entitled  British  Painters  and  Sculptors. 
To  a  writer  who  came  to  him  for  a  sketch  of  his  life,  he 
said,  "Don't  take  sides  with  conflicting  opinions  about  me; 
don't  strive  to  write  me  up  or  down ;  tell  the  facts."  He  went 
on  to  talk  of  Boswell.  "They  have  called  him  a  conceited 
fool,"  said  he,  "but  he  was  of  as  much  benefit  to  literature  as 
Johnson  himself.  He  put  things  down  as  they  were,  and  for 
once  we  have  the  charming  chronicle  of  a  life  without  the 
weakness  of  apology." 

To  the  author  of  this  volume,  the  poet  said:  "There  is  a 
Chemistry  in  Nature  that  is  making  the  worst  good  and  the 
best  better.  To  this  end  a  biographer  may  give  scars  the 
treatment  distance  gives  them  in  the  landscape;  he  may 
soften  or  spiritualize  them — but  never  ignore  them."  In  a 
word,  the  golden  rule  was  this :  speak  the  truth  in  love. 

Evidently  the  above  observations  suggest  a  sympathetic, 
lovable  book;  but  it  is  one  thing  to  receive  suggestions,  an 
other  and  altogether  different  thing  to  carry  them  out.  The 
author  does  not  claim  to  have  done  this,  but  he  does  claim 
while  doing  his  work  to  have  had  the  poet's  ideals  uppermost 
in  mind.  By  breaking  away,  to  some  extent,  from  "the  dull 


FOKEWORD 

order  of  chronology"  and  by  the  liberal  use  of  anecdote,  he 
hopes  the  narrative  has  gained  in  variety  and  interest.  In 
ways  incalculable  he  is  indebted  to  others,  and  chiefly  to  the 
poet,  who  made  numerous  corrections  in  the  records  and  cor 
dially  approved  all  efforts  to  arrive  at  the  truth  through  them. 
To  all  who  have  thus  generously  assisted  him,  the  gratitude 
of  the  author  is  given  without  reservation. 

The  poet's  life,  as  he  saw  it,  was  divided  into  two  periods : 
Youth  and  Maturity — the  latter  carrying  with  it  the  idea  of 
wrestling  with  and  solving  manhood's  problems — the  former 
roughly  covering  the  first  thirty  years  of  his  life,  but  often 
mantling  with  its  fervor  the  period  far  beyond.  Youth  was 
the  spring  and  summer  of  his  fortunes ;  Maturity  the  autumn 
and  winter.  Age  was  unnecessary.  "Youth,"  he  was  wont 
to  repeat,  "is  the  mainspring  of  the  world."  If  he  could  be 
enrolled  among  the  Eternal  Boys,  that  was  fame  enough. 

Out  of  college  halls,  city  workshops,  and  wayside  cottages, 
have  come  hosts  of  Kiley  readers  who  have  thought  and  who 
still  think  of  him  as  a  living  friend  because  he  sang  of  living 
things.  Eecalling  the  tribute  of  their  love,  the  author  can 
not  conceal  the  lively  hope  that  this  chronicle  of  their  friend 
by  their  friend  may  find  a  genial  corner  in  their  good  opinions. 

THE  AUTHOR. 
Heart  of  the  Highlands, 

Nashville,  Indiana, 
June,  1919. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS   ....  1 

II  THE  EHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD 19 

III  SALAD  DAYS — A  CRISIS — AND  A  TRADE    .    .  48 

IV  THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      ...  84 
V  OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY    .    .     .    .  105 

VI  WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY 132 

VII  WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED     .    .    .    ,    .  158 

VIII  ATTORNEY  AT  LAW 181 

IX  WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY    .    .    .     .  193 

X  SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET 216 

XI  THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN 235 

XII  IN  THE  DARK 252 

XIII  VISION  OF  His  MISSION 271 

XIV  THE  GOLDEN  GIRL 283 

XV  LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE      .    .  312 

XVI  ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT    ....  331 

XVII  THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO 359 

XVIII  WEATHERING  THE  STORM 401 

INDEX 419 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

THE  RILEY  YOUTH  AT  FOURTEEN   ....  Frontispiece 
THE  POET'S  MOTHER,  ABOUT  1860  .     .     .     Facing  page  12 

His  FIRST  SCHOOLHOUSE "13 

LOG  CABIN  ON  THE  NATIONAL  ROAD  WHERE 

THE  POET  WAS  BORN "        "34 

RILEY  HOMESTEAD  IN  GREENFIELD,  1856   .  "     35 
THE  POET'S  HANDWRITING  THE  YEAR  OF 

His  VISION ,  60 

His  HANDWRITING  TWENTY  YEARS  LATER  "       M     60 
THE  POET'S  PENMANSHIP  IN  His  SCHOOL 
DAYS    "61 

THE  POET'S  FATHER,  CAPTAIN  REUBEN  A. 

RILEY ,  "        "     94' 

OLD  SHOE-SHOP   ........  "95 

THE  MOTHER'S  GIRLHOOD  HOME  ON  THE 

MISSISSINEWA "120 

STANDARD  REMEDY  TRADE-MARK  .  .  .  "  121 
"LOGAN'S"  SPEECH  TO  THE  FISHERMEN  .  "  146 
GRAPHIC  COMPANY  BUSINESS  CARD  .  .  "  147 
RILEY  &  MCCLANAHAN  BUSINESS  CARD  .  "  "  147 
JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY — AGE  TWENTY- 
TWO  , ...  ,  "  178 

OLE  BULL,  THE  MASTER  MUSICIAN  .     .    ;.,  "       "   179 

THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY  ,.    ,.     .    ,.,    ...  "       "  212 

DONALD  GRANT  MITCHELL   ....     w  "   213 

THE  SIGN  ON  THE  COUNTRY  BARN  .      ...  "        "   248 

New  YORK  STORE  SIGN  AT  ANDERSON  „  w        '«   349 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS— Continued 

FACSIMILE    LETTER    FEOM    HEARTH    AND 

HOME Facing  page  274 

HEADING  OF  HEARTH  AND  HOME     ...  "  "  275 

"THAT  SIGN  IN  THE  POST  OFFICE"  ...  "  "  275 

HER  BEAUTIFUL  HAND "  "304 

WHEN  THE  POET  WAS  TWENTY-FIVE    .     .  "  "  305 

THE  SECOND  LETTER  FROM  LONGFELLOW   .  "  "  320 

HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW   ...  «  «  340 

JOHN  TOWNSEND  TROWBRIDGE   ....  "  "  341 

ANDERSON  DEMOCRAT  OFFICE    ....  "  "  380 

OLD  COTTAGE  ON  BOLIVAR  STREET   ...  «  «  331 

THE  POET  AT  THE  AGE  OF  TWENTY-EIGHT  "  "  406 

OLD  COUNTY  COUBT  HOUSE  .               -  "  "  407 


THE  YOUTH  OF 
JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 


The  Youth  of 
James  Whitcomb  Riley 

CHAPTER  I 


A    GLIMPSE    OF   THE    EARLY 


IT  WAS  the  tide  of  migration:  what  the  Red  Man 
called  the  White  Man's  Flood — youth,  commerce 
and  trade,  visions  of  wealth,  the  arts,  sowing  and 
reaping,  faith,  hope  and  love,  following  the  Great 
Western  Pioneer,  the  sun.  Rising  from  the  shores  of 
the  British  Isles  and  the  continent  of  Europe,  it  crossed 
the  Atlantic  and  fringed  the  seaboard  of  a  new  world 
with  cities  and  farms.  It  ascended  the  eastern  slopes 
of  the  mountains,  poured  through  the  gates  of  the  Blue 
Ridge  and  the  Alleghanies,  and  swept  through  the 
forests  and  over  the  prairies  of  the  Ohio  Valley. 

What  was  its  character?  Who  were  the  emigrants? 
They  were  not  one  people,  not  a  family  of  single 
extraction  from  one  motherland.  They  were  French 
men  and  Englishmen,  Dutch,  Irish,  and  Scotch 
men,  descendants  of  Puritans  and  cavaliers,  gen 
tlemen  from  Virginia,  artisans  from  Pennsylvania 
and  students  from  New  England.  There  were 
woodmen,  sturdy  swains,  and  delvers  with  the  spade; 
pedestrians,  riders,  and  revelers — and  felons,  not  mul 
titudes  of  them  such  as  the  motherland  once  sent  to 
Australia,  but  a  sufficient  number  to  be  an  important 

1 


2  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

factor  in  the  structure  of  states.  There  were  soldiers 
ever  ready  to  hurry  to  the  charge,  and  orators  who 
swayed  the  multitude  with  impassioned  speech.  There 
came  also  musicians.  In  the  new  land  as  in  the 
old,  the  four  essentials  were  food,  clothing,  shelter  and 
recreation.  Over  the  mountains  "with  the  cooking 
pots  and  pails"  came  the  fiddle  and  banjo.  There  were 
the  forefathers  of  sculptors  and  painters,  and 


'Of  poets  pacing  to  and  fro, 
Murmuring  their  sounding  lines" ; 


particularly  the  ancestors  of  a  poet  of  simple  life, 
the  central  figure  in  the  succeeding  chapters  of  this 
volume.  It  was  a  race  of  men  with  their  backs  turned 
upon  the  sea,  "civilization  frayed  at  the  edges,"  a 
master  historian  has  said,  "taken  forward  in  rough 
and  ready  fashion,  with  a  song  and  a  swagger,  by 
woodsmen  and  drovers,  with  axes  and  whips  and  rifles 
in  their  hands."  Hundreds  among  the  thousands  who 
came  were  disappointed.  Many  returned,  but  the  large 
majority  remained,  "built  cabins,  planted  crops,  culti 
vated  farms,  founded  towns  and  cities,  and  established 
a  new  empire." 

Of  the  land  to  which  they  came  it  may  be  said  that 
in  expanse  and  grandeur  it  surpassed  all  other  won 
derlands  of  the  temperate  zone.  The  Forest  of  Arden 
in  which  the  imagination  of  Shakespeare  reveled  was 
a  brushwood  in  comparison.  Such  mammoth  trees  the 
eye  of  man  had  seldom  seen.  It  was  a  rich  land. 
Daniel  Boone,  looking  out  over  it,  was  "richer  than 
the  owners  of  cattle  on  a  thousand  hills."  But  its 
wealth  could  not  be  measured  by  the  hunter's  eye.  It 
was  a  primeval  region  many  hundred  leagues  in  cir 
cumference.  From  east  to  west  it  equaled  the  distance 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS  3 

traversed  by  Stanley  in  his  march  to  the  Mountains  of 
the  Moon.  But  how  great  the  contrast.  The  Stanley 
region  was  in  the  darkest  corner  of  the  earth,  brood 
ing  under  the  eternal  storm-clouds  of  the  equator.  The 
masses  of  forest  vegetation  suggested  mystery  and  awe. 
Not  so  the  American  woods.  As  the  African  explorer 
said  of  them,  "There  was  poetic  seclusion,  graceful  dis 
order,  bits  of  picturesque  skies,  and  the  sun  shedding 
softened  streams  of  light  on  scenes  of  exhaustless 
beauty  and  wonder."  The  scenes  were  vocal  with  the 
songs  of  streams  and  birds.  Breezes  whispered  their 
gentle  mysteries  to  the  trees,  and  mighty  winds  made 
music  in  the  forest  like 

"The  roar  of  Ocean  on  his  winding  shore." 

It  was  a  midway  region,  exempt  alike  from  the  se 
verity  of  the  Canadian  winters  and  the  enervating 
summer  heat  of  the  Gulf  coast.  The  kingdom  of  nature 
— the  seasons,  morning,  noon,  evening,  and  the  silence 
of  night — surpassed  the  splendors  of  the  Orient;  and 
when  Indian  summer  came  to  fold  the  land  in  sym 
pathetic  sleep,  there  came  with  it  a  vision  of  per 
fection  that  rivaled  dreams  of  the  Golden  Age. 
"The  world  of  childhood,"  wrote  William  Dean 
Howells,  whose  boyhood  was  a  part  of  it,  "the  child 
hood  of  that  vanished  West,  which  lay  between  the 
Ohio  and  the  Mississippi,  and  was,  unless  memory 
abuses  my  fondness,  the  happiest  land  that  ever  there 
was  under  the  sun." 

In  such  a  land  it  was  less  difficult  for  men  and 
women  to  order  their  lives  on  a  comprehensive  scale, 
and  they  began  to  do  that.  Their  dreams  and  deeds, 
in  part,  corresponded  to  their  surroundings.  They 
loved  youth.  "They  lived  freely  with  powerful  unedu- 


4  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

cated  persons.  They  loved  the  earth,  the  sun  and  the 
animals;  despised  riches,  hated  tyrants,  and  took  off 
their  hats  to  no  man  nor  any  number  of  men."  They 
were  transformed  by  the  rough  fortunes  of  the  fron 
tier,  and  in  the  passing  of  the  years  a  poet  was  born  to 
celebrate  the  transformation — a  poet  of  the  people  with 
poems,  said  Mark  Twain,  "as  sweet  and  genuine  as 
any  that  his  friends,  the  birds  and  bees,  make  about 
his  other  friends,  the  woods  and  flowers." 

There  was  another  side  to  the  picture  of  the  West, 
the  West  as  seen  one  lovely  April  by  Charles  Dickens, 
then  a  young  novelist  of  thirty,  who  came  down  the 
Ohio  River  in  a  steamboat  and  hurried  through  the  re 
gion  from  Cincinnati  to  Lake  Erie,  in  a  stage-coach. 
Ohio  and  Indiana  were  in  the  making;  Cincinnati, 
lying  in  its  amphitheater  of  hills,  commended  itself  to 
the  novelist  favorably  and  pleasantly.  The  way  out  of 
the  city  led  through  a  beautiful,  cultivated  country 
rich  in  the  promise  of  an  abundant  harvest.  Soon 
however  the  scene  changed.  Roadside  inns  were  dull 
and  silent.  There  were  the  primitive  worm-fence,  the 
unseemly  sight  of  squalid  huts,  wretched  cabins, 
broken-down  wagons,  and  shambling,  low-roofed  cow 
sheds.  Villagers  stared  idly  at  the  passengers  and 
sent  up  a  silly  shout  when  the  coach  bumped  against 
the  stumps  in  the  street.  Loafers  lounged  around  the 
country  stores,  the  climate  was  pernicious  and  every 
where  were  signs  of  ill  health  and  depression. 

Beyond  were  miles  upon  miles  of  forest  solitudes 
"unbroken  by  any  sign  of  human  life  or  any  trace  of 
human  footsteps" — then  to  come  suddenly  upon  a 
clearing" with  black  stumps  strewn  about  the  field,  to 
find  settlers  burning  down  the  trees,  the  charred  and 
blackened  giants  of  the  wood  lying  like  so  many  "mur- 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS  5 

dered  creatures"  on  the  earth — it  was  a  scene  to  excite 
the  traveler's  compassion.  His  mind  reverted  to  a 
former  age  when  mighty  forest  trees  spread  their  roof 
over  a  land  enchanted,  an  aboriginal  age  when  men 
lived  pleasantly  in  blessed  ignorance  of  the  destruction 
and  miseries  of  the  White  Man's  Flood. 

That  branch  of  the  tide  of  migration  which  Dickens 
saw  lacked  diversity  of  character.  The  emigrants 
were  hollow-cheeked  and  pale,  silent,  joyless  and  un 
social.  The  women  were  drowsy;  the  men  seemed 
"melancholy  ghosts  of  departed  bookkeepers."  Had 
he  left  the  stage-coach  and  lived  for  a  space  with 
the  settlers,  had  he  gone  with  them  to  husking- 
bees,  barn-raisings  and  log-rollings,  he  would  have 
found  robust  constitutions  and  an  abundance  of  joy  and 
laughter.  Among  those  who  lived  on  corn  bread,  boiled 
ham  and  cabbage,  he  would  have  found  many  who  saw 
the  beauty  in  the  rainbow,  in  the  thunder-storm  and 
the  sunset.  And  gratitude  for  literature  he  would 
have  found  also.  John  Hay  relates  that  early  settlers 
in  Kentucky  saddled  their  horses  and  rode  from  neigh 
boring  counties  to  the  principal  post-town  whenever  a 
new  Waverley  novel  was  expected.  Among  the  old 
books  scattered  here  and  there  in  the  log  cabins  of  In 
diana  and  Ohio,  Dickens  would  have  found  a  new  one, 
Master  Humphrey's  Clock,  which  then  contained  the 
story  of  Little  Nell,  whose  life  found  an  echo  in  the 
brief  histories  of  domestic  joys  and  sorrows  of  the 
frontier.  Among  those  who  idolized  this  heroine  of 
fiction  was  Elizabeth  Marine,  who  a  few  years  later 
became  the  mother  of  a  child  of  song  whose  mission 
was  to  make  glad  the  people  with  poetry  wrought  from 
the  very  things  that  had  filled  the  heart  of  Dickens 
with  discontent.  As  the  south  wind  warms  winter 


6  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

into  spring,  as  the  sun  turns  the  sod  to  violets,  so  was 
this  child  of  song  to  transmute  the  homeliness  of  those 
early  days  into  beauty.  Things  were  unsightly  when  the 
novelist  passed.  There  was  to  be  loveliness  and  har 
mony  when  the  singer  came. 

It  was  a  desire  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  stand  in  the 
midst  of  a  wild  original  American  forest  "with  the 
idea  of  hundreds  of  miles  of  untrodden  forest  around 
him,"  in  the  vast  region  stretching  westward  from  the 
Alleghanies,  for  example.  Such  was  the  good  fortune 
of  those  families  who  first  settled  in  the  woods  of  Ran 
dolph  County,  Indiana.  Geographically  they  were  in 
the  very  heart  of  the  region.  Leading  back  from  those 
settlements,  as  indeed  from  settlements  in  every 
county,  were  threads  of  genealogy,  which,  if  not  para 
mount  in  importance,  nevertheless  gave  color  to  sub 
sequent  life.  They  played  a  part  in  the  youth  of  the 
nation.  History  does  not  omit  them  from  those  days 
of  hope  and  discovery.  They  belong  to  "the  great 
story  of  men."  One  of  those  threads  led  back  to  Bed 
ford,  Pennsylvania,  where  Reuben  Alexander  Riley, 
father  of  the  poet,  was  born  in  the  year  1819. 

"I  know  when  my  father  was  born,  at  any  rate," 
once  remarked  the  poet,  crowing  over  the  one  date  in 
history  he  could  remember. 

"When?"  he  was  asked. 

"The  year  Queen  Victoria  was  born." 

"And  what  year  was  that?" 

"I  don't  know." 

Reuben  Riley  was  the  fifth  in  a  family  of  fourteen 
children.  His  father,  Andrew  Riley,  and  his  mother, 
Margaret  (Sleek)  Riley,  were  born  and  reared  in 
Pennsylvania.  "My  grandfather  Riley,"  said  Reuben, 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS  7 

"was  an  Irishman  and  my  grandfather  Sleek,  a  Ger 
man.  Both  grandmothers  were  English." 

In  1825  Andrew  Riley  moved  with  his  family  to  west 
ern  Ohio,  and  a  few  years  later  across  the  Indiana  line 
to  a  knoll  on  Stony  Creek,  Randolph  County,  where  he 
built  a  log  cabin  near  a  cluster  of  giant  trees  known  as 
the  "sugar  orchard."  On  the  way  from  Pennsylvania, 
a  distance  of  four  hundred  miles,  the  family  experi 
enced  many  hardships.  The  father  had  sold  all  his 
belongings  for  thirty  dollars — except  a  horse,  a  "carry 
all"  and  some  clothing.  He  and  the  older  sons  walked 
while  the  mother  drove  the  wagon  and  cared  for  the 
youngsters.  They  lived  in  the  open,  building  camp-fires 
in  the  woods  at  night.  Through  the  foothills  of  the 
Alleghanies,  their  food  was  chiefly  chestnuts  and  gin 
gerbread.  In  Ohio  they  had  such  luxuries  as  Indian 
corn,  apples  and  sweet  potatoes. 

After  reaching  the  woods  of  Indiana,  so  tradition 
says,  "they  lived  on  the  fat  of  the  land."  There  were 
grains,  venison,  squirrels  and  plenty  of  vegetables. 
There  were  wild  animals  to  trap  and  wild  turkeys  to 
shoot;  red  deer  came  to  Stony  Creek  daily  and  black 
bear  were  abundant. 

Andrew  Riley,  certainly,  had  enough  and  to  spare. 
One  season  when  there  was  a  scarcity  of  grain,  desti 
tute  Miami  Indians  came  to  him  and  he  loaded  their 
ponies  with  corn.  Another  year,  a  stockman  insisted 
on  buying  all  the  corn  he  had  at  seventy-five  cents  a 
bushel.  The  offer  was  refused.  "My  neighbors  need 
it,"  said  he,  "for  seed  and  bread."  He  sold  to  them  for 
twenty-five  cents  a  bushel. 

Such  a  man  was  naturally  happy  in  his  declining 
years,  and,  above  all,  at  peace  with  himself  and  the 


8  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

world.  A  few  days  before  he  died,  he  said,  "I  have 
never  intentionally  wronged  any  man.  I  have  not  been 
vulgar  or  profane.  I  have  tried  to  do  right.  I  do  not 
fear  to  die." 

Another  line  of  genealogy  led  back  to  Rockingham, 
North  Carolina,  where  Elizabeth  (Marine)  Riley, 
mother  of  the  poet,  was  born  in  1823.  She  was  the 
tenth  in  a  family  of  eleven  children.  Her  father. 
John  Marine,  and  her  mother,  Fanny  (Jones)  Marine, 
were  reared  in  the  South.  Her  family  lineage,  on 
the  paternal  side,  could  be  traced  back  to  the 
year  1665.  Her  grandfather  Marine  was  born  in  Wales, 
being  a  descendant  of  the  French  Huguenots,  "those 
refugees  that  brought  art  and  the  refinements  of  civili 
zation  wherever  they  came."  His  wife  was  a  perse 
cuted  Quaker  from  England.  On  coming  to  Americs 
they  first  settled  among  the  Indians  in  Maryland,  bul 
later  sought  the  warmer  climate  of  the  Carolinas.  Ir 
1825,  having  lost  his  little  fortune  by  speculating  ir 
weaver-sleighs,  John  Marine  moved  with  his  family  t( 
Indiana,  crossing  the  Ohio  River  at  North  Bend- 
Among  the  incidents  of  the  journey  was  the  halt  for  a 
few  days  on  the  Ohio,  and  the  joy  at  finding  the  new 
country  all  agog  over  the  visit  of  the  Great  Lafayette. 
For  years  the  story  was  a  favorite  in  the  Marine 
family,  how  the  friend  of  Washington  had  ascended  the 
river,  and  after  spending  a  day  with  Henry  Clay  under 
the  great  trees  at  Ashland,  had  come  to  be  the  guest  oi 
the  Queen  City,  his  emotions  when  he  beheld  the  fron 
tier  host  on  the  hills  of  a  city  that  two  score  years  be 
fore  was  but  a  cluster  of  log  huts  by  the  river;  how 
the  Stars  and  Stripes  rippled  from  steamboats  and 
buildings,  and  the  applause  echoed  from  both  shores 
while  the  venerable  hero  was  conveyed  across  the  river 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS          9 

in  a  barge,  how  the  alleys  and  commons  were  blockaded 
with  ox  teams  and  country  wagons,  how  it  had  rained 
in  torrents  for  a  week,  and  how  the  artillery  splashed 
through  the  muddy  streets — a  big  story  it  was  of  pa 
triotism  in  the  backwoods,  and  the  Marines  were  radi 
ant  with  it  when  they  reached  Indiana. 

After  a  transient  residence  at  New  Garden  and  one 
or  two  other  points  in  Wayne  County,  they  settled 
permanently  on  the  Mississinewa  River  in  Randolph 
County,  where  they  built  a  cabin  on  a  high  bank  at  a 
bend  in  the  river  a  few  miles  below  Ridgeville.  To 
the  south  was  a  white  oak  grove,  a  favorite  retreat  for 
Elizabeth  Marine.  "She  often  went  there,"  said  her 
brother  James,  "to  commune  with  the  big  oak."  Thus 
the  moral  influence  of  nature  began  to  sink  into  her 
soul. 

The  Marines  were  flat-boat  builders,  millers,  and 
verse-makers.  About  the  first  thing  they  did  on  reach 
ing  a  new  country  was  to  establish  a  mill  site  and 
write  a  poetic  narrative  of  their  wanderings.  "John 
Marine,"  so  said  his  gifted  grandson,  "wrote  his  auto 
biography  in  rhyme.  He  would  sit  by  the  fireplace  and 
write  heavy  turbid  poetry  on  scientific  and  Biblical 
subjects.  The  tendency  was  to  the  epic."  He  laid  out 
the  town  of  Rockingham  on  the  Mississinewa  and  ad 
vertised  the  lots  in  rhyme.  The  town,  according  to  an 
old  record,  had  so  small  a  growth  and  so  early  a  death, 
that  settlers  of  a  later  period  could  not  find  the  faint 
est  trace  of  its  location.  All  that  now  remains  on 
the  site  are  a  few  unmarked  graves  in  the  far  corner 
of  a  cow  pasture,  among  them  the  grave  of  Elizabeth 
Marine's  mother. 

John  Marine  was  not  only  a  boat-builder  and  rhymer, 
but  a  teacher  and  preacher  as  well.  He  preached  to 


10  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

neighbors  in  his  cabin  on  Sunday.  He  wrote  a  book 
advocating  the  union  of  the  churches — a  suicidal  thing 
to  do  in  his  day — which  in  part  is  said  to  have  been  in 
rhyme.  The  manuscript  was  kept  many  years  in  a 
trunk,  but  "one  winter,"  to  quote  his  grandson  again, 
"six  mice  reduced  it  to  confetti.  On  the  first  ballot  the 
jury  was  divided,  but  at  last  the  vote  was  unanimous 
for  destruction." 

As  a  preacher  John  Marine  had  more  than  a  local 
reputation.  He  and  the  poet's  grandmother,  Margaret 
Riley,  were  leaders  in  the  Methodist  camp-meetings  of 
Randolph  and  Delaware  Counties.  There  were  no  wan 
dering  eyes  when  they  addressed  the  meetings,  particu 
larly  when  the  latter  spoke. 

"Elizabeth  Marine,"  said  William  A.  Thornburg,  an 
old  resident  of  Randolph  County,  "was  remarkably 
pure-minded.  I  never  saw  any  one  so  beautiful  in  a 
calico  dress.  She  belonged  to  a  large  family.  They 
lived  in  a  one-story  log  house.  It  had  a  clay  and  stick 
chimney.  She  went  to  school,  but  her  chief  delight 
was  to  play  along  streams  and  wander  in  the  green 
woods.  She  was  always  seeing  things  among  the 
leaves." 

Except  that  her  eyes  were  blue  instead  of  brown, 
Longfellow  might  have  chosen  Elizabeth  Marine  for 
his  portrait  in  "Maidenhood."  Her  nature  was  poetic. 
One  of  her  girlhood  friends  remembered  her  ascending 
Muncie  hill  on  the  Mississinewa  to  get  a  view  of  clear 
ings  in  the  valley,  and  how  happy  she  was  at  the  sight 
of  the  blue  smoke  curling  up  from  cabins  in  the  morn 
ing  air.  The  friend  added  that  "she  adored  her  garden 
and  the  cultivation  of  small  fruits.  When  she  stood 
in  the  hollyhocks  she  seemed  to  be  in  a  trance."  She 
loved  to  listen  to  the  sound  of  woodchoppers,  and  the 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS         11 

crunch  of  wagons  dragged  wearily  by  oxen  along  the 
road.  At  dusk  sweet  to  her  was 

"The  clinking  of  bells  on  the  air 
Of  the  cows  coming  home  from  the  wood." 

The  scenery  that  was  uninteresting  to  Dickens  was 
fair  and  comely  to  her.  She  saw  the  "orange  in  the  eve 
ning  sky."  Bright  colored  birds  were  "flying  flowers." 
Peering  through  the  trees  she  caught  the  glimpse  of 
Pan  although  it  was  not  her  gift  to  adorn  the  scene 
with  the  vines  of  verse  as  did  her  illustrious  son. 

Pomona  would  have  envied  this  maiden  of  the  Missis- 
sine  wa  her  enjoyment  of  the  wild  orchards  of  that 
period.  To  listen  to  "Johnny  Appleseed,"  the  eccen 
tric  wanderer  who  planted  them,  was  one  of  her 
happy  opportunities.  She  remembered  his  telling  of 
his  first  visit  to  the  Indiana  forest,  how  he  had  brought 
a  sack  of  apple  seeds  on  the  back  of  an  ox.  His  narra 
tive  pleased  her  because  it  was  novel.  His  peculiarities 
were  captivating — like  a  bird  he  was,  roosting  where 
night  overtook  him — always  wearing  ragged  clothes — 
never  carrying  a  gun — never  sleeping  in  a  bed — never 
having  any  place  he  called  home,  yet  always  happy, 

"While  he  was  walking  by  day  or  lying  at  night  in  the 

forest, 

Looking  up  at  the  trees,  and  the  constellations  beyond 
them." 

She  recalled  that  he  was  a  Swedenborgian,  and  how 
deeply  she  was  impressed  with  his  belief  that  "grow 
ing  old  in  Heaven  is  growing  young."  James  Marine, 
her  brother,  long  afterward  said  that  this  was  his 
sister's  vision  of  Heaven  as  long  as  she  lived. 

Among  the  influences  that  came  through  the  moun 
tain  passes  with  the  tide  of  migration,  was  the  breath 


12  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

of  love — love,  as  the  poet  has  said,  fresh  with  the  youth 
of  the  world,  old  and  yet  ever  new,  and  always  beau 
tiful.  "We  had  to  reckon  with  it  on  all  occasions, "  said 
a  county  pioneer;  "it  swayed  young  hearts  at  picnics 
and  camp-meetings  as  the  breeze  swayed  the  green 
tree-tops."  In  a  settlement  on  Cabin  Creek  (to  which 
point  the  Marines  had  come  after  Elizabeth's  mother 
had  died  and  the  home  had  been  broken  up  on  the 
Mississinewa)  was  a  slender  young  woman  twenty 
years  old,  lovely  as  the  maiden  of  Plymouth,  and  like 
her,  too,  in  that  she  was  familiar  with  the  hum  of  the 
spinning-wheel.  Over  in  the  Stony  Creek  settlement 
was  a  young  man  twenty-four  years  old.  He  was  lithe, 
straight  and  tall,  had  black  eyes,  black  hair  and  a 
radiant  face.  He  was  known  for  his  eloquence  in  de 
bating  clubs,  had  taught  school,  studied  law  in  a  neigh- 
•  boring  county-seat,  been  admitted  to  the  bar,  and  had 
had  a  limited  practice  in  a  prairie  village  in  Iowa. 

"Now  it  happens  in  this  country/'  said  Abraham 
Lincoln,  "that,  for  some  reason  or  other,  we  meet  once 
every  year,  somewhere  about  the  Fourth  of  July. 
These  Fourth  of  July  gatherings,  I  suppose,  have 
their  uses."  Indeed,  they  do,  and  quite  the  first 
of  the  uses  of  the  Fourth  of  July  gathering  in  Neeley's 
Woods,  near  the  village  of  Windsor,  Randolph  County, 
1843,  was  that  Reuben  A.  Riley  might  meet  Elizabeth 
Marine  and  fall  a  victim  to  her  beauty.  It  was  a  day 
for  family  reunions — a  barbacue  day,  the  "roast"  con 
sisting  of  several  pigs,  an  ox,  and  five  lambs.  Stony 
Creek  laughed  through  the  wood,  and  there,  too,  played 
those  other  streams,  "the  life-currents  that  ebb  and 
flow  in  human  hearts."  There  was  the  confusion  of 
wagons,  the  "herd  of  country  boys,"  babies  tumbling 
on  the  ground,  and  men  and  maidens  making  merry. 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS         13 

As  the  afternoon  wore  on,  the  rounds  of  pleasure 
continued,  the  last  year's  leaves  were  swept  from  a 
spot  in  the  woods,  and,  to  paraphrase  Tennyson, 

"men  and  maids 

Arranged  a  country  dance,  and  flew  through  light 
And  shadow,  while  the  twanging  violin 
Struck  up  with  Yankee  Doodle,  and  lofty  beech 
Made  noise  with  bees  and  breeze  from  end  to  end." 

Here  Reuben  Riley  and  Elizabeth  Marine  met  for  the 
first  time — and  their  dancing  feet  went  forward  with 
the  rest.  "It  was  love  at  first  sight,"  said  James 
Marine.  "I  am  an  old  man  now  and  have  seen  many 
days  of  pleasure,  but  none  like  that  one  in  Neeley's 
Woods.  I  think  I  never  saw  my  sister  dance  so 
happily." 

As  usual,  Lincoln,  the  master  interpreter  of  men 
and  events,  was  right.  A  young  lawyer  came  to  that 
forest  jubilee  free  as  an  eagle.  He  met  a  young  woman 
he  had  not  seen  before,  and  left  the  woods  that  night 
a  captive  for  life.  Truly,  "these  Fourth  of  July  gath 
erings  have  their  uses." 

Although  the  crowd  assembled  at  the  behest  of  Lib 
erty,  it  did  not  march  in  procession  with  banners.  A 
few  flags  hanging  from  the  trees  paid  tribute  to  "the 
day  we  celebrate."  There  were  no  giant  fire  crackers, 
nor  Roman  candles,  no  pyrotechnic  display  except  the 
flames  from  a  log-heap  and  a  few  shell-bark  hickory 
fires,  which  illumined  the  woods  at  nightfall.  There 
were  no  fairy-balloons — but  there  were  fairies,  on  the 
authority  of  James  Marine  and  his  friend  William 
Thornburg,  who  remembered  that  Elizabeth  pointed 
to  them  in  the  flickering  shadows  above  her. 

"  Love,"  according  to  the  old  saw,  "  keepeth  its  cap 
tive  awake  all  night,"  So  Reuben  Riley,  after  losing 


14  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

his  heart  that  July  day,  had  his  repose  sadly  disturbed. 
There  was  an  Indian  pony  trail  some  six  miles  long 
between  Stony  Creek  and  Cabin  Creek,  which  he  trav 
eled  frequently  by  the  light  of  a  lantern.  Eagerly  he 

"Followed  the  pathway  that  ran  through  the  woods  to 
the  house  of  Priscilla," 

but  unlike  John  Alden  he  was  not  led  thither  by  de 
ceptive  fancy.  He  went  always  on  the  errand  of  love. 
Love  "was  spinning  his  life  and  his  fortune"  and  the 
life  and  fortune  of  a  son  of  song.  All  thought  of 
returning  to  the  far-away  town  on  the  prairies  for 
the  practice  of  law  came  to  an  end.  His  reflections 
fashioned  a  home  in  Indiana.  February  20,  1844, 
he  and  his  sweetheart  Elizabeth  were  married  at 
Unionport  on  Cabin  Creek — and  thus  the  pony  path 
was  turned  into  a  bridal  path. 

For  a  time  previous  to  her  marriage,  Elizabeth  had 
lived  with  her  brother  at  Unionport.  "We  made  them 
a  pretty  wedding,"  said  her  sister-in-law.  "Her  brother 
Jonathan  and  Emily  Hunt  stood  up  with  them.  They 
looked  nice.  Her  wedding  dress  was  a  pale  pink  silk. 
She  wore  a  long  white  veil  and  white  kid  gloves  and 
shoes.  Her  infair  dress  was  gray  poplin.  She  looked 
beautiful  in  her  leghorn  bonnet  the  next  day  when  she 
rode  away  on  horseback  with  Reuben  through  the 
woods." 

After  the  honeymoon,  which  in  those  days  did  not 
include  a  trip  to  the  Mediterranean,  the  young  hus 
band  brought  his  bride  in  July,  1844,  to  live  in  Green 
field,  a  village  of  three  hundred  inhabitants,  on  Brandy- 
wine  Creek,  Hancock  County,  Indiana.  It  being  the 
usual  thing  to  do  then,  he  moved  into  a  log  cabin — 


m 


THE  POET'S  MOTHER,  ABOUT  1860 


His  FIRST  SCHOOLHOUSE 
The  little  Dame  Trot  dwelling  of  three  rooms 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS         15 

"Upon  the  main  street  and  the  main  highway 
From  East  to  West — historic  in  its  day — 
Known  as  the  National  Road." 

Greenfield  was  fifteen  years  old.  Like  the  settle 
ments  in  Randolph  County,  it  was  neighbor  to  the 
primeval  forest.  That  forest  had  "multiplicity  and 
richness  of  tinting,"  and  there  was  no  "sad  poverty  of 
variety  in  species"  among  the  trees.  "The  county 
is  heavily  timbered,"  said  an  early  record,  "as  largely 
covered  with  beech,  sugar  maple,  oak,  ash,  elm,  walnut, 
buckeye,  and  hickory  as  any  county  in  the  State."  A 
report  of  a  Mass  Convention  refers  to  settlers  "emerg 
ing  from  the  beech  woods  around  our  peaceful  village." 
The  humorist  smiles  at  the  size  of  that  Mass  Conven 
tion.  It  was  held  in  a  courtroom  which  was  then  the 
upper  floor  of  a  log  house  about  twenty  feet  long. 

The  population  was  sparse.  There  were  tangled 
solitudes  in  the  county  that  challenged  the  courage  of 
the  bravest  immigrant.  Roads  were  few  and  winding. 
Settlers  consumed  days  in  going  to  mill,  although  one 
is  inclined  to  believe  they  did  other  things  on  the 
way,  for  one  settler  is  said  to  have  returned  in  his 
ox-cart  with  "four  deer,  a  half  dozen  fox  and  wolf 
skins,  and  seven  wild  turkeys."  Less  than  two  score 
years  before  Reuben  Riley  came  to  Greenfield,  the 
Delaware  Indians  were  tramping  up  and  down  Brandy- 
wine,  to  and  from  their  hunting  grounds,  then  located 
in  the  wilderness,  now  known  as  Shelby  and  Bartholo 
mew  Counties.  So  far  as  the  records  show  there  was 
no  poet  in  the  tribe  who 

"Heard  the  songs  divine, 
Up  and  down  old  Brandywine." 

The   young   couple   promptly   took   a    prominent 


16  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

place  in  the  life  of  the  community;  in  its  labors  and 
its  pleasures.  Soon  after  their  coming,  the  first 
newspaper  was  printed,  the  Greenfield  Reveille,  and 
the  husband  announced  himself  in  its  business  directory 
as  "Attorney  at  Law,  Office  at  my  residence."  He  was  a 
favorite  from  the  first,  and  there  was  a  demand  for  his 
eloquence  on  public  occasions.  He  took  a  lively  interest 
in  the  national  campaign,  becoming  a  champion  of 

"Polk  and  Annexation 

against 
The  Bank  and  High  Taxation." 

"His  bride  Elizabeth  also  was  a  favorite*  She 
was  the  joy  of  the  neighborhood,  and  there  was 
a  melody  in  her  voice  on  moonlit  evenings  that 
those  who  heard  could  not  forget.  On  public  occa 
sions  she  was  remembered  for  "the  bloom  and  grace 
of  womanhood."  Old  residents  recalled  how  beautiful 
she  looked  among  friends  on  the  front  porch  of  the  old 
National  Hotel.  They  remembered  her  charming  man 
ners  and  how  lovingly  she  waved  her  hand  to  her  hus 
band  in  a  procession  that  passed  by.  She  contributed 
verse  to  the  weekly  Reveille  and  later  to  the  Greenfield 
Spectator  and  other  county  papers,  among  them  The 
Family  Friend  and  the  American  Patriot.  What  she 
wrote  did  not  pass  muster,  but  there  was  a  poetic 
impulse  in  the  heart,  none  the  less.  She  was  a  link  in 
the  Marine  genealogy,  and  as  destiny  designed,  the 
last  in  that  succession  of  verse-makers,  who,  for  a 
century  or  more,  in  their  humble  way,  had  foretold 
the  coming  of  a  poet,  whose  pen  would  one  day  trans 
figure  the  simple  beauty  of  simple  things — and  thereby 
make— 


A  GLIMPSE  OF  THE  EARLY  DAYS  17 

"Rude  popular  traditions  and  old  tales 
Shine  as  immortal  poems." 

Once  for  all  it  may  be  said  that  Greenfield  was  no 
mean  village.  Notwithstanding  the  neighboring  Black 
Swamp  and  the  marsh  lands  on  Brandywine,  it  had  a 
charmingly  romantic  setting.  Locust  trees  and  sugar 
maple  saplings  stood  irregularly  along  the  sidewalks. 
Beech,  ash  and  walnut,  left  standing  when  the  ground 
was  cleared,  gave  variety  and  shade  to  backyards  and 
byways.  The  dwellings  were  cabins  and  frame  cot 
tages.  The  business  rooms  were  for  the  most  part 
one-story  buildings,  though  an  occasional  two-story 
one  gave  promise  of  more  pretentious  blocks  in  days 
to  come. 

As  Reuben  and  Elizabeth  Riley  took  their  place  in  the 
community,  so  Greenfield  took  its  place  in  "the  great 
psalm  of  the  republic."  It  was  the  gathering  place  for 
life  currents  from  southern  climes,  and  from  the  farm 
lands  and  cities  of  the  East.  There  were  students  with 
a  record  of  things  done  under  the  elms  at  Yale,  and 
neighbor  to  these,  now  and  then,  a  squire  of  birth  and 
distinction,  who  pointed  with  pride  to  his  huge  Carolina 
wagon  and  his  four-horse  team,  which  he  had  driven 
from  his  plantation  on  the  Great  Pedee.  This  blending 
of  the  East  and  South  meant  in  the  next  generation  "a 
peculiar  people" — a  population  untrammelled  by  the 
artifice  of  fashion  and  formality.  It  meant  independ 
ence  and  simplicity  of  character.  An  acre  of  earth 
near  Greenfield  dilated  with  "the  grandeur  and  life  of 
the  universe,"  as  did  an  acre  in  the  vicinity  of  Boston 
or  Savannah.  There  was  a  school  of  experience, 
ample  opportunity  for  diversity  of  endeavor.  There 
were  love,  courtship  and  marriage,  and  devotion  to 
home  and  country.  The  region  grew  robust  men,  and, 


18  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

none  the  less,  mothers  of  large  families,  whose  opinions 
on  men  and  affairs  compared  favorably  with  the  judg 
ments  of  their  husbands.  There  was  a  native  fresh 
ness  that  made  even  the  illiterate  interesting.  Village 
statesmen  talked  profoundly  of  their  country's  possi 
bilities  and  perils,  and  hunters  and  woodmen  were  not 
strangers  to  books  or  the  calls  of  culture. 

"We  had  our  dreary  days,"  remarked  an  early  set 
tler,  "but  were  not  cast  down.  We  were  up  with  the 
lark  and  down  with  rheumatism  but  seldom  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  lark's  song."  Nature  nourished  the  poetic 
impulse,  whatever  the  station  in  life,  state  of  health, 
or  degree  of  intelligence. 

A  peaceful  village  surrounded  by  beech  woods  with 
a  little  "willow  brook  of  rhymes"  flowing  through  it, 
the  beech  woods  a  part  of  a  primeval  forest  diversified 
with  neighborhoods  of  men,  women  and  children 
— all  in  all,  as  happy  a  land  and  time  for  the  birth  of 
a  poet  as  "ever  there  was  under  the  sun." 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD 

I  HAVE  no  doubt  that  somewhere  in  the  wilds  of 
this  western  land  the  wind,  whispering  through 
the  chinks  of  some  log  cabin,  is  ruffling  the  curls 
upon  the  brow  of  a  future  son  of  fame." 

Such  were  the  words  of  an  Indiana  orator  in  a  speech 
delivered  in  the  forties  of  the  last  century.  The  proph 
ecy  was  not  made  in  vain.  Several  sons  of  fame  were 
born  in  that  decade,  but  the  birth  of  one  particularly 
concerns  these  pages.  One  day  in  October,  1849,  a 
fortnight  after  that  birth,  Fortune  singled  out  a  run 
away  boy  to  find  the  cradle  of  future  greatness.  Hurry 
ing  away  from  discontentment  at  his  home  in  Indian 
apolis,  the  boy  ran  eastward  along  the  old  Plank 
Road.  It  was  Sunday  morning.  The  woods  were 
yellowing  and  orchard  boughs  were  bending  with 
ripened  fruit.  When  he  grew  hungry  he  filled  his  linen 
coat  pockets  with  apples.  Occasionally  a  farm  wagon 
going  to  or  from  church  gave  him  a  lift  and  for  a  time 
he  was  accompanied  by  a  stranger  who  listened  suspi 
ciously  to  the  tale  of  his  woes. 

The  forenoon  was  long,  the  afternoon  longer,  but  just 
as  the  sun  was  sinking  behind  the  notorious  Black 
Swamp  the  toll-gate  burst  upon  the  runaway's  tired 
vision,  and  a  few  moments  later  he  saw  in  the  deepen 
ing  twilight  the  village  of  Greenfield,  the  end  of  his 
day's  flight.  At  the  edge  of  town  he  fell  in  with 
a  boy  who  had  been  driving  cows  to  pasture.  The 

19 


20  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

lad  directed  him  to  the  home  of  one  Reuben  A.  Riley — 
a  young  lawyer,  thirty  years  of  age,  and  a  leading  citi 
zen  of  the  little  county-seat. 

"There  the  lawyer  lives,"  said  the  boy  as  they  entered 
Main  Street,  pointing  to  a  little,  unpainted,  half-frame, 
half-log  house  in  the  southeast  corner  of  its  lot.  At  the 
gate  the  boys  parted  and  soon  a  timid  knock  brought  the 
lawyer  to  the  door — and  the  runaway  stood  speechless 
in  the  presence  of  his  brother.  Not  meeting  in  the  stern 
dark  eye  of  the  lawyer  the  welcome  he  hoped  for,  the 
young  brother  covered  his  face  with  his  hands  and  sat 
down  on  the  door-step.  At  the  same  moment  he  heard 
the  rustle  of  a  dress  and  the  voice  of  a  gentle  wife 
and  mother.  She  stood  for  an  instant,  "saintly  and 
sad  as  the  twilight,"  and  then  led  the  boy  through 
the  front  room  to  the  kitchen — the  frame  structure  at 
the  rear  of  the  cabin. 

Now  that  the  runaway  is  in  the  arms  of  the  mother, 
it  is  good  to  listen  to  his  story  in  his  own  words — 
as  it  was  told  half  a  century  later.  "Within  her 
arms,"  said  he,  "I  had  the  feeling  of  utter  security. 
She  combed  my  hair  and  seated  me  on  her  knee.  As 
the  story  of  my  running  away  proceeded,  I  looked  up 
and  there  inside  the  kitchen  door  stood  the  swarthy 
form  of  the  lawyer,  his  arms  folded  and  his  eyes  bent 
severely  upon  us.  Lifting  her  soft  blue-gray  eyes  to 
his,  with  tears  shining  on  their  fringes  like  dew  on 
the  grass,  she  pled  my  cause.  'Let  him  stay  and  be  a 
companion  to  our  children/  said  she.  At  this,  the  black 
eyes  softened.  Laying  his  hand  on  my  head  and  look 
ing  longingly  into  her  face,  he  said,  'There,  Lizzie,  it  is 
settled ;  he  can  stay ;  I  will  inform  the  folks  to-morrow/ 

"Then  came  supper — and  such  a  supper  the  Prodigal 
Son  never  feasted  upon.  Everything — pie,  cake,  pre- 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  21 

serves,  milk  and  bread  white  as  snow — and  all  the 
time  the  mother  standing  behind  my  chair,  filling  my 
plate  as  often  as  I  could  clear  it.  After  supper  we  went 
to  the  front  room.  'I  have  something  pretty  to  show 
you/  she  said ;  'something  you  have  never  seen.'  Lead 
ing  me  to  an  old-fashioned  box  cradle,  near  the  window 
where  the  'Queen  of  the  Prairie'  shed  its  fragrance  on 
the  night  breeze,  she  gently  lifted  a  snowy  little  cover 
and  showed  me  the  sleeping  face  of  a  babe.  I  stooped 
and  kissed  its  dainty  lips — and  thus  I  entered  a  Child- 
World." 

The  baby  had  been  born  Sunday  morning,  October 
7,  1849,  and  a  week  later  christened  James  Whitcomb 
Riley  in  response  to  the  father's  admiration  for  Gov 
ernor  James  Whitcomb  of  Indiana.  "At  no  period  in  the 
history  of  the  State,"  said  the  Governor,  in  his  Thanks 
giving  message,  "has  the  bounty  of  God  In  the  control 
of  the  seasons  been  so  signally  manifested  towards  us 
as  during  the  year  now  drawing  to  a  close."  He  was 
thinking  of  material  blessings,  but  Heaven  was  not 
unmindful  of  the  new  birth  of  poesy  in  the  box  cradle 
at  Greenfield. 

True  to  the  instincts  of  child-nature,  the  boy  started 
from  his  cradle  on  a  voyage  of  discovery.  "The  first 
thing  I  remember,"  said  Riley,  "was  my  father's  riding 
up  to  the  woodhouse  door  with  a  deer  hanging  from  the 
pommel  of  his  saddle;  and  about  the  second  thing  I 
remember  was  the  bugler  who  galloped  west  on  the 
National  Road  with  news  of  the  death  of  President 
Taylor."  Before  he  could  walk  the  Riley  child  learned 
that  his  by-name  was  "Bud,"  and  that  he  had  been  thus 
lovingly  distinguished  by  his  Uncle  Mart,  Martin  Whit- 
ten  Riley,  the  runaway  who  had  discovered  him  in  the 
box  cradle.  The  uncle,  a  few  years  "Bud's"  senior,  was 


22  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

himself  a  youth  of  "poetic  symptoms/*  and,  next  to 
the  mother,  had  the  greatest  influence  on  her  boy 
in  that  morning  of  childish  glee.  He  could 
invent  stories  for  boys  almost  as  interesting  as 
those  he  remembered  from  books.  He  built  a  playhouse 
for  the  children  in  the  apple  trees,  and  sometimes  when 
summer  days  were  hot  and  long  he  climbed  to  it  him 
self  "to  moon  over  a  novel"  or  to  ease  his  heart  of 
"hopeless  verse."  In  springtime,  when  the  hired  hand 
went  to  the  country  to  plant  and  plow  corn,  he  took 
his  place  in  the  yard  and  garden.  He  pruned  the  apple 
trees,  and  it  was  often  his  fortune  to  sniff  "alluring 
whiffs  of  the  dear  old-fashioned  dinners  the  children 
loved."  He  was  also  the  hired  girl  when  the  mother 
had  more  than  she  could  do,  as  was  often  the  case.  At 
meal-time  he  seated 

"The  garland  of  glad  faces  round  the  board — 
Each  member  of  the  family  restored 
To  his  or  her  place,  with  an  extra  chair" 

for  the  farmer  the  father  brought  in  from  the  street,  or 
a  state  politician  who  came  from  afar  on  the  long  high 
way  for  a  conference  with  the  lawyer  at  the  noon  hour. 
Uncle  Mart  inspired  the  little  "Bud"  with  his  first 
ambition,  the  desire  to  be  a  baker,  and  at  divers  times 
took  the  place  of  the  mother  or  the  hired  girl  when 
they  were  too  busy  to  give  lessons  in  cooking.  "Bud" 
spent  much  of  the  time  in  the  kitchen,  rolling  dough 
and  making  pies,  which  at  first  were  little  more  than 
fragments.  After  a  while  he  improved  so  that  he 
"could  build  pies  of  legitimate  size.  My  joy"  (to  quote 
from  his  own  memory  of  them)  "was  complete  when 
I  could  fashion  a  custard  pie — and  then  came  the  feat, 
worthy  of  a  slight-of-hand  performer,  of  getting  it 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  23 

into  the  oven  without  spilling."  His  ambition  was  not 
a  childish  whim.  For  several  years  he  felt  a  twinge  of 
disappointment  that  he  had  not  realized  it.  He  really 
thought  he  would  make  a  success  as  a  baker. 

The  kitchen  being  a  world  far  too  small  for  a  boy  of 
"Bud's"  possibilities,  the  circle  of  his  discoveries  soon 
extended  to  the  garden  and  stable  lot ;  in  short,  he  began 
to  distinguish  himself  by  an  eminent  degree  of  curios 
ity.  "Then,"  as  he  observed  when  older,  "was  the  flood- 
tide  of  interrogation  points.  I  could  ask  more  questions 
than  grandfather  in  Paradise  could  answer  in  a  year" 
— why  bears  steal  pigs  from  the  pen — why  they  carry 
bee  gums  on  their  arms — where  go  the  wagons  on  the 
Plank  Road — what  the  leaves  say  when  they  whisper — 
why  the  grass  is  green — why  the  rain  drools  down  the 
window-pane — why  the  moon  is  low  and  the  stars  are 
high — never  an  end  of  questions — and  never  an  end  of 
questing.  One  day  the  mother  discovered  that  "Bud" 
was  a  poet,  when  he  came  running  from  the  yard,  all  in 
a  flutter,  with  a  story  of  an  apple  shower.  "Uncle 
held  the  basket,"  he  prattled, 

"Old  Aunt  Fanny  wuz  shaking  'em  down, 
And  Johnny  and  Jimmy  wuz  picking  'em  up." 

The  lines  lacked  the  touch  of  the  trained  lyrist,  but  as 
Uncle  Mart  said,  "they  tinkled."  The  hint  of  a  tune 
ful  future  may  be  taken  for  what  it  is  worth,  but  there 
is  testimony  to  the  effect  that  the  poetic  impulse  dawned 
in  the  Riley  heart  very  early.  He  did  not,  like  Bryant, 
"contribute  verse  to  the  county  paper  before  he  was 
ten  years  old,"  but  he  was  a  poet  in  feeling  before 
that  date.  One  spring  morning  Uncle  Mart  led  him 
away  for  a  whole-day  ramble  up  a  stream  that  rose  in 
the  hills  and  came  prattling  through  the  village — "the 


24       •          JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

little  willowy  Branch  of  rhymes,"  it  was,  "that  split 
the  town"  and  mingled  its  current 

"With  the  limpid,   laughing  waters 
Of  the  Classic  Brandywine." 

As  Riley  remembered,  he  was  about  six  or  seyen 
years  old.  For  him  it  was  a  day  of  blooming  cheeks 
and  open  brow — a  day  of  discovery.  He  recalled  that 
Uncle  Mart  talked  of  the  stream  and  the  thick  woods  as 
a  stage.  He  and  "Bud"  were  stage-hands  lifting  cur 
tains  for  views  of  scenery.  "And  not  a  great  while 
after,"  said  Riley,  recalling  the  enchantment  of  that 
childish  hour,  "I  learned  that  the  world  is  a  stage  and 
that  Fortune  is  the  stage-hand  that  lifts  the  curtain." 
Back  of  Uncle  Mart  and  "Bud"  was  a  fairy  impulse 
from  the  mother.  The  uncle  credits  her  with  "build 
ing  and  formulating  the  happiest  programs  that  were 
ever  placed  upon  the  boards  of  her  home  stage."  The 
ramble  along  the  Branch  was  the  beginning  of  a  period 
that  sparkled  with  joy  akin  to  that  of  the  dancing 
stream.  Often  "Bud"  was  drawn  to  its  banks  to  listen 
to  its  limpid  waters.  Its  pebbles,  glittering  in 
the  ripples,  looked  up  to  him  "like  the  eyes  of 
love."  They  did  not  kindle  the  poetic  impulse  in 
him  as  it  was  kindled  a  few  years  later  by  Tharpe's 
Pond,  a  "little  mirror  of  the  sky"  in  the  woods,  but 
there  were  "poetic  symptoms"  unmistakably.  While 
he  sought  the  play-place  of  his  childhood,  Nature 
planted  in  his  heart  the  germs  of  "The  Brook-Song,"  a 
lilting  melody  that  rivals  the  music  of  the  stream  that 
inspired  it.  It  was  no  fleeting  influence  that  sparkled 
in  his  vision 

"Till  the  gurgle  and  refrain 

Of  its  music  in  his  brain 
Wrought  a  happiness  as  keen  to  him  as  pain." 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  25 

A  playmate  of  his  age  (now  Mrs.  Rose  Mitchell 
Gregg)  gives  a  village  portrait  of  the  Riley  boy,  such 
a  picture  as  a  friend  once  gave  of  Tennyson  paddling 
in  the  sandy  shallows  of  his  boyhood  stream.  "I  saw 
Eiley  once,"  she  writes,  "when  he  was  about  eight 
years  old,  down  in  our  neighborhood  wading  in  the 
Branch  with  his  trousers  rolled  up  above  his  knees. 
Holding  them  high  as  he  could  with  his  hands,  he  was 
kicking  the  water  and  looking  for  the  deep  places.  He 
wore  a  little  blue  roundabout  and  a  soft,  white  felt  hat 
without  band  or  lining.  His  hair  was  very  light  and  cut 
short,  his  eyes  big  and  blue  and  his  face  freckled.  He 
was  a  slight  little  fellow,  but  keen  and  alert.  I  won 
dered  why  he  had  wandered  so  far  from  home.  Wad 
ing  in  the  Branch  was  a  joyous  pastime  for  Greenfield 
children."  Smiling  back  on  the  incident  Riley  gave  it 
the  flavor  of  a  rhyme — 

"My  hair  was  just  white  as  a  dandelion  ball, 
My  face  freckled  worse  than  an  old  kitchen  wall." 

His  love  of  the  brook  reveals  at  that  very  early  date 
what  became  for  him  a  primary  motive  of  life: 
passion  for  the  beautiful — that  something  that  sends 
children  to  the  fields  for  flowers,  the  sense  that  delights 
in  singing  birds,  the  colors  of  sunset,  and  the  rustle  of 
leaves  in  October  woods.  "I  remember,"  said  Riley, 
"when  that  passion  became  a  controlling  influence,  how 
it  incited  me  to  an  act  that  does  not  now  flame  with 
the  color  it  had  then.  I  wanted  a  pair  of  boots  with  red 
tops.  I  slipped  away  from  home  to  a  shoe  store  where 
my  father  bought  on  credit.  After  looking  in  vain  for 
them  I  selected  a  pair  with  green  tops  and  told  the 
clerk  to  charge  them.  At  home  I  stole  upstairs  to  my 
bedroom  and  there  wore  them  all  alone  with  great  joy. 


26  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

I  strode  around  the  room  proud  as  a  knight  with  a  spur 
on  his  heel.  When  any  one  came  up  the  stairway  I 
quickly  pulled  them  off  and  hid  them  under  the  feather 
bed.  Thus  I  enjoyed  them  for  two  weeks  before  my 
purchase  was  discovered.  My  father  insisted  on  re 
turning  them,  but  my  mother's  love  prevailed,  and  after 
that  I  was  permitted  to  wear  them  in  public." 

A  similar  instance  was  Riley's  purchase  of  a  cake 
of  toilet  soap  with  pennies  he  had  saved  for  the  pur 
pose.  "I  was  probably  eight  years  old,"  said  he.  "I 
wanted  to  pace  back  and  forth  in  front  of  the  show 
case — just  look  at  it  for  a  while  before  I  bought.  When 
a  clerk  came  toward  me  I  looked  at  something  else  till 
he  gave  attention  to  another  customer.  For  weeks 
after  I  bought  it  I  kept  the  cake  in  my  pocket — just 
pleased  to  my  finger-tips  with  its  transparent  beauty. 
I  shall  not  grow  old  so  long  as  I  enjoy  a  show  case  of 
toilet  soap." 

As  runs  the  proverb,  God  oft  hath  a  large  share  in  a 
little  house.  In  the  present  history,  His  share  is  in  the 
log  cabin  that  stood  at  the  side  of  the  old  National  Road 
in  Greenfield.  In  the  human  as  well  as  the  divine  order 
of  things,  the  day  arrived  for  it  to  be  torn  down — the 
family  having  moved  to  a  new  homestead — and  Uncle 
Mart  and  the  children  came  with  the  hired  man  to  that 
end.  Having  lived  in  it  for  a  decade,  the  mother  was 
pensive,  but  the  children  were  altogether  happy. 

In  that  cabin  home  originated  an  influence  that 
was  as  far-reaching  as  it  was  beautiful — the  faith 
in  fairies.  Night  after  night.  Uncle  Mart  had  tucked 
little  "Bud"  in  his  trundle  bed  and  lulled  him  to  sleep 
with  fairy  tales.  That  was  the  beginning.  The  faith 
in  fairies  never  died.  When  "Bud"  became  a  man, 
it  was  modified,  but  never  forsaken.  "Earth  out- 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  27 

grows  the  mystic  fancies,"  sang  Mrs.  Browning.  As 
Riley  saw  it,  the  outgrowth  was  a  fatal  day  for  the 
earth.  He  held  with  Schiller  and  Wordsworth  that  in 
the  overthrow  of  mythology  the  world  had  lost  more 
than  it  had  gained.  As  the  image-making  power  in  the 
mind  of  the  race  was  busy  with  the  marvelous  things 
of  old,  so  should  it  be  busy  with  the  marvelous  things 
of  now.  Hence  the  Arabian  Nights  remained  his 
favorite  book.  To  the  last,  he  held  unalterably  to  the 
sentiment  of  the  "Natural  Educationists,"  that  there 
are  fairies  in  the  hearts  of  all  good  and  great  people — 
"that  fairies  whisper  to  us  to  do  good  deeds — that 
fairies  are  the  creative  power  which  has  caused  the 
building  of  great  structures,  the  painting  of  great  pic 
tures,  the  composition  of  great  music,  and  the  produc 
tion  of  great  poems."  His  lead  pencil,  a  candlestick, 
wicker  baskets  and  other  objects  about  the  room  were 
fairies  in  disguise.  Every  thought  that  kindled  his 
heart  into  rapture  came  to  him  on  fairy  wings  from 
the  shores  of  mystery,  and  whenever  anything  he  did 
fell  below  the  plane  of  fairy  endeavor,  "was  reduced," 
as  he  said,  "by  the  tyranny  of  conditions  to  the  level  of 
a  humdrum  existence,"  he  was  unhappy.  The  fairies 
were  absent.  The  fire  in  his  heart  was  low.  Like 
Lowell,  he  mourned  the  loss  of  Aladdin's  lamp  and  the 
beautiful  castles  in  Spain.  But  this  was  never  so  when 
he  could  maintain  a  fairy  interest  in  his  work.  When 
ever  his  faculties  were  quickened  to  the  fervor  he  ex 
perienced  in  childhood,  when  visions  of  pure  joy  rav 
ished  his  heart,  his  fevered  sight  was  cooled.  Then 
all  was  love — » 

"The  chords  of  life  in  utmost  tension 
With  the  fervor  of  invention."- 


28  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

The  Marines  traced  a  line  of  genealogy  back  to  de 
scendants  of  the  Celts  in  Wales,  the  people,  said  by 
some  authorities,  to  have  had  the  most  poetic  child 
hood  of  all  the  races.  Who  knows?  Perhaps  Riley's 
adorable  faith  in  fairies,  and  his  mother's  before  him, 
were  after  all  the  faith  of  the  little  people  that  once 
lived  in  the  obscure  islands  and  peninsulas  of  western 
Europe.  Who  knows?  His  charming  simplicity,  his 
delicacy  of  feeling,  and  his  desire  to  penetrate  the  un 
known  may  have  had  a  Celtic  origin,  may  have  been 
traceable  to  "the  race  that  above  all  others  was  fitted 
for  family  life  and  fireside  joys."  It  is  certainly  a 
Celtic  picture  we  have  of  Riley  as  a  child  in  the  log 
cottage.  In  the  cabin,  after  twilight,  while  the  apples 
sputtered  on  the  hearth  and  the  light  from  the  fireplace 
flickered  on  the  walls,  stories  reeled  from  Uncle  Mart's 
fancy  as  brightly  as  the  flames  laughed  up  the  chim 
ney  ;  and  best  of  all,  the  mother  approved  the  harmless 
fictions  and  laughed  heartily  with  the  flames  and  the 
children.  "Bud"  once  noted  the  absence  of  katydids 
and  crickets — could  not  understand  it.  They  were 
the  fairies  of  summer-time,  the  mother  had  explained — 

"Only  in  the  winter-time 
Did  they  ever  stop, 
In  the  chip-and-splinter-time 
When  the  backlogs  pop." 

As  the  cabin  walls  were  lowered,  other  incidents  were 
recalled.  The  children  remembered  the  jolly  winters, 
and  particularly  the  coldest  night  of  the  year  when  the 
mother  held  the  lamp  and  little  "Bud"  a  candle,  while 
they  chinked  the  cracks  where  the  wind  blew  through 
the  floor.  And  just  outside  the  front  door,  like  a  senti 
nel,  the  old  Snow-Man  had  stood  for  weeks  in  "lordly 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  29 

grandeur," — the  masterpiece  that  had  surpassed  the  art 
of  classic  Greece.  Uncle  Mart  was  reminded  of  shelter 
from  the  rain.  He  distinctly  remembered  the  "rever 
ential  shade"  on  the  mother's  face  when  listening  to 
distant  thunder,  and  her  smile  of  gratitude  when  she 
heard  the  refrain  of  the  rain  on  the  roof.  The  mother 
recalled  a  rainy  day  when  the  father  was  away  and 
the  other  children  had  gone  a-visiting,  how  little  "Bud" 
in  a  state  of  breathless  anticipation,  stood  by  the  win 
dow,  marking  the  teams  as  they  approached  and  van 
ished  on  the  National  Road : 

"And  there  was  the  cabin  window—* 
Tinkle,  and  drip,  and  drip! 
The  rain  above,  and  a  mother's  love, 
And  God's  companionship!" 

All  in  all,  winter  and  summer,  the  log  cottage  was  a 
thing  of  blessed  memory.  The  poet  was  born  there 
who,  when  grown,  was  to  save  from  the  ruins  a  picture 
of  its  simplicity  and  beauty — the  young  mother  throned 
in  her  rocking-chair  with  a  work-basket  on  the  floor, 
the  laughter  and  call  of  the  children  across  the  way, 
the  summer  wind  luring  the  fragrance  of  roses  from 
her  window,  the  while  her  dreamy  boy,  lying  near  her, 
face  downward,  was  bending 

"above  a  book 

Of  pictures,  with  a  rapt  ecstatic  look — 
Even  as  the  mother's,  by  the  self -same  spell, 
Was  lifted  with  a  light  ineffable — 
As  though  her  senses  caught  no  'mortal  cry, 
But  heard,  instead,  some  poem  going  by." 

T  One  autumn  the  log  cabin  had  received  a  coat  of 
weather-boarding,  but  the  exact  year  is  indefinite,  some 
claiming  it  was  the  year  the  poet  was  born,  others  the 
year  following.  Even  the  poet's  father,  who  drew  a 


30  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

sketch  of  the  cottage  in  his  old  age,  was  not  sufficiently 
definite  on  the  point  to  be  historic.  But  all  agree  that 
the  young  married  couple,  on  coming  from  the  Ran 
dolph  County  woods,  to  live  in  Greenfield,  occupied  the 
cabin.  All  agree  that  the  poet  was  born  there,  and 
that  it  stood  snugly  at  the  corner  of  the  lot  in  the  shade 
of  trees  that  grew  on  the  edge  of  the  street. 

Prior  to  the  birth  of  his  famous  son,  Reuben  A.  Riley 
had  served  one  term  in  the  state  legislature  with  credit 
to  himself  and  his  constituency.  There  he  had  met 
Governor  James  Whitcomb,  whom  to  meet  was  to  honor 
and  love.  A  few  years  later  he  zealously  discharged  the 
duties  of  county  prosecuting  attorney.  He  took  great 
interest  in  politics,  and  on  several  occasions  distin 
guished  himself  for  his  eloquent  defense  of  freedom.  He 
was  a  leader  in  the  Democratic  party  of  Indiana  and 
so  remained  till  the  Fremont  campaign  when  he  with 
Oliver  P.  Morton  and  others  espoused  the  cause  of  the 
Republican  party.  In  those  stormy  years  he  was  in 
the  full  strength  of  his  young  manhood.  Republican 
leaders,  Morton  among  them,  placed  a  high  estimate 
on  his  services  "in  moulding  the  sentiments  of  the 
young  men  of  the  State,"  who  later  responded  to  the 
call  of  President  Lincoln.  "In  the  political  campaigns 
from  1852  to  1860,"  to  quote  from  a  political  opponent, 
"there  was  ho  orator  more  in  demand  than  Reuben  A. 
Riley,  or  one  who  more  uniformly  satisfied  the  de 
mand.  He  expounded  the  principles  of  the  new  party 
as  did  no  other  orator  in  Indiana.  His  joint  debates 
were  the  talk  of  campaigns.  Men  referred  to  his 
speeches  as  finished  orations." 

All  the  while  he  was  succeeding  in  the  practice  of 
the  law.  His  public  services  brought  him  clients, 
brought  him  financial  success.  Prosperity  came  down 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  31 

the  National  Road  and  tipped  the  horn  of  plenty  at  his 
door,  and  that  meant  the  means  for  a  larger  Riley 
homestead, 

"The  simple,  new  frame  house — eight  rooms  in  all — 
Set  just  one  side  the  center  of  the  small 
But  very  hopeful  Indiana  town." 

While  the  father  was  absent  campaigning,  the  mother 
and  children  at  home  worked  with  Mother  Nature. 
They  had  a  grape-arbor  built  like  a  covered  bridge  over 
the  pathway  to  the  garden.  A  row  of  currant  bushes 
grew  near.  Bees  murmured  in  hives  at  the  side  of  the 
lot.  Lilacs  and  flowering  vines  grew  lavishly  in  the 
front  yard.  Apple  trees  stood  here  and  there  between 
the  street  and  the  garden,  and 

"Under  the  spacious  shade  of  these,  the  eyes 
Of  swinging  children  saw  the  soft-changing  skies." 

In  that  family  of  the  Long  Ago,  were  two  brothers 
and  two  sisters — each,  in  the  gracious  afterwhiles, 
happily  recalled  by  the  gifted  brother  in  the  Child- 
World.  A  third  sister,  Martha  Celestia  Riley,  born 
February  21,  1847,  died  in  childhood.  Oldest  of  the 
brothers  was  John  Andrew  Riley,  born  December  11, 
1844.  He  was  the  grave  leader  among  them.  He  had 
a  quick  observant  eye  and  a  keen  retentive  memory. 
Although  inclined  to  serious  duties,  he  nevertheless 
could  forget  the  gravity  of  life  and  kindle  fires 
of  delight.  For  a  season  he  would  make  tame 
incidents  sparkle  with  lively  mirth,  and  then  (the  chil 
dren  could  never  just  quite  tell  why)  there  almost  in 
variably  followed  an  interval  of  seeming  remorse  that 
made  him  undesirable  company.  Nevertheless  he  was 
loved  for  his  love  of  others : 


32  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"So  do  I  think  of  you  alway, 

Brother  of  mine,  as  the  tree, — 
Giving  the  ripest  wealth  of  your  love 
To  the  world  as  well  as  me." 

The  youngest  brother,  Humboldt  Alexander  Riley, 
was  born  October  15,  1858.  He  was  specially  remem 
bered  for  his  insistence  on  truth  in  his  elders.  They 
recalled  his  peach-bloom  complexion  and  particularly 
his  love  of  father  and  mother.  Freaks  of  temper  were 
yoked  in  him  to  uncommon  aspirations  and  affections. 
He  was  the  lorn  child, 

"Whose  yearnings,  aches  and  stings 
Over  poor  little  things" 

were  as  poignant  and  pitiful  as  the  sorrow  of  the  family 
over  his  death  in  early  manhood. 

The  second  daughter,  Elva  May  Riley,  born  Janu 
ary  14,  1856,  was  the  "little  lady"  with  golden  curls. 
She  had  the  blue  of  the  skies  in  her  eyes.  She  never 
romped  up  and  down  stairs.  She  was 

"thoughtful  every  way 

Of  others  first — The  kind  of  a  child  at  play 
That  'gave  up/  for  the  rest,  the  ripest  pear 
Or  peach  or  apple  in  the  garden  there." 

The  third  and  youngest  daughter,  Mary  Elizabeth 
Riley,  the  only  member  of  the  family  living  at  the  time 
these  words  are  written,  was  born  October  27,  1864. 
With  a  touch  of  fancy  (in  the  child  book)  her  eminent 
brother  recalled  a  little  girl  with  a  "velvet  lisp  on 
elfin  lips" — 

"Though  what  her  lips  missed,  her  dark  eyes  could  say 
With  looks  that  made  her  meaning  clear  as  day." 

As  she  grew  to  womanhood,  she  manifested  many  of 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  33 

his  characteristics,  his  subtle  recognition  of  and  affec 
tion  for  the  fairy  wonderland  of  days  gone  by,  love 
of  nature,  and  the  harmless  eccentricities  of  human 
kind. 

It  may  seem  to  some  that  the  Riley  lad  neglected  the 
schoolroom,  and  in  one  sense  he  did.  "Omit  the  school 
room  from  my  history  entirely,"  he  once  said,  "and  the 
record  of  my  career  would  not  be  seriously  affected." 
The  remark  was  not  made  in  criticism  of  the  public 
school,  but  rather  to  show  that  he  had  not  been  edu 
cated  in  the  conventional  manner.  In  ways  innumer 
able,  before  he  entered  the  schoolhouse,  he  was  getting 
an  education.  He  was  taught  to  read  at  home.  From  the 
very  first  he  seems  to  have  practised  "the  art  of  think 
ing,  .the  art  of  using  his  mind."  His  little  system  of 
opinions  was-  not  faultless,  but  he  dared  to  uphold  it. 
He  strove  for  the  useful  side  of  things  and  was 
just  as  vigorous  in  contending  against  what  he  thought 
was  useless.  He  compassed  the  First  Reader  while 
other  children  struggled  with  its  opening  pages.  In  a 
few  days  he  had  reached  the  end  of  the  book — the  lesson 
in  which  Willy,  Katy,  Carry  and  their  mother  go  to  the 
seaside.  The  children  were  digging  in  the  sand  with 
wooden  spades,  when  they  threw  them  down  to  look  at 
a  ship  sailing  by.  Soon  the  ship  will  be  out  of  sight, 
according  to  the  lesson,  and  the  children  will  go  home. 
"They  will  do  nothing  of  the  sort,"  said  Riley,  recall 
ing  his  youthful  dream ;  "they  will  sail  with  the  ship 
to  foreign  lands  for  tea,  sugar,  pineapples  and  cocoa- 
nuts.  The  wind  will  transport  them  to  far-away  gar 
dens  of  happiness,  at  least  it  did  me,  and  I  believe  all 
children  will  be  so  transported  if  parents  would  begin 
aright  to  develop  in  them  the  imaginative  faculty.  Of 
course  children  do  not  have  the  poetic  vision  Long- 


34  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

fellow  had  when  he  lay  down  and  listened  to  the  sound 
of  the  waves,  but  they  do  have  in  their  little  hearts  a 
picture  of 

'Spanish  sailors  with  bearded  lips 
And  the  beauty  and  mystery  of  the  ships, 
And  the  magic  of  the  sea/  " 

The  reason  for  "Bud's"  special  interest  in  the  sea 
side  was  this.  He  had  been  taught  his  letters  and 
Primer  by  his  mother  and  Uncle  Mart,  but  the  art  of 
comprehending  what  he  read  was  chiefly  taught  him  by 
a  careless-haired  boy,  Almon  Keefer,  whose  "interest 
ing  and  original  ways  with  children,"  said  Riley, 
"fairly  ignite  the  eye  of  memory  with  rapture."  Al 
mon  had  an  open,  honest  countenance  and  a  joyous  in 
terest  in  nature  but  his  chief  merit,  as  far  as  the  Riley 
nursery  was  concerned,  was  his  interest  in  books,  and 
his  skill  in  reading  aloud  to  children.  One  of  the  books 
he  read  was  Tales  of  the  Ocean,  an  old  book  of  stories, 
in  character  much  like  Tales  of  the  Wayside  Inn. 
Of  the  early  books  it  was  quite  near  if  not  the  first  of 
the  list. 

"Its  back  was  gone, 
But  its  vitality  went  bravely  on 
With  its  delicious  tales  of  land  and  sea." 

When  therefore  "Bud"  was  sent  to  school,  it  was 
natural  that  he  should  protest  against  the  foolish 
repetitions  in  the  First  Reader  and  hurry  on  through 
it  to  kernels  of  interest.  He  was  a  little  rebel  at  the 
end  of  the  second  lesson : 

"Is  it  an  ax? 
It  is  an  ax. 
It  is  my  ax. 
Is  it  by  me? 
My  ax  is  by  me. 
So  it  is," 


LOG  CABIN  ON  THE  NATIONAL  ROAD  WHERE  THE  POET  WAS  BORN 


RILEY  HOMESTEAD  IN  GREENFIELD,  1856 


THE  RHYME  OF  -CHILDHOOD  35 

"How  criminal,"  said  Riley,  commenting  on  the 
schoolboy  experience,  "to  cramp  the  imagination:  of  a 
child  in  a  barren  back-lot  like  that  when  a  world  of 
ships  and  singing  birds  and  meadow  fields  may  be  had 
for  the  asking.  The  secret  of  the.  whole  matter  is  this, 
whether  it  be  the  lesson  for  the  child  or  the  book  for 
the  man — it  must  be  interesting."  A  vital  opinion, 
paralleled  by  the  observation  of  Herbert  Spencer,  that 
too  often  our  system  of  education  drags  the  child  away 
from  the  facts  in  which  it  is  interested.  "Bud"  Riley 
was  Spencer's  self-taught  London  gamin  gathering  out- 
of-school  wisdom  for  himself. 

When  Riley  became  associate  editor  of  a  county 
paper,  he  reiterated  his  protest  in  a  half -column,  "To 
Parents  and  Preceptors": 

"We  will  shortly  issue,"  he  wrote  in  humorous  vein 
in  the  first  paragraph,  "a  little  educational  work,  which 
we  design  shall  take  the  place  of  McGuffey's  First 
Reader.  We  have  nothing  against  McGuffey,  but  we 
love  the  institutions  of  our  country,  moral  and  educa 
tional,  and  by  the  publication  of  the  little  volume  we 
are  at  present  compiling,  we  confidently  expect  to  meet 
a  long-felt  want  of  our  public  schools,  and  by  its  pres 
entation  to  our  bright-eyed  little  friend,  'the  school 
boy,  with  shining  morning  face,  creeping  like  a  snail, 
unwillingly  to  school/  we  expect  to  take  the  initial  step 
toward  a  general  revolution  of  the  educational  system 
as  it  stands  to-day." 

Save  for  his  first  school  Riley  seldom  recalled  his 
school-days  pleasantly.  "My  first  teacher,"  said  he, 
"Mrs.  Frances  Neill,  was  a  little,  old,  rosy,  roily-poly 
woman — looking  as  though  she  might  have  just  come 
rolling  out  of  a  fairy  story,  so  lovable  she  was  and  so 
jolly  and  so  amiable.  Her  school  was  kept  in  a  little  old 


36  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

one-story  dwelling  of  three  rooms,  and — like  a  bracket 
on  the  wall— a  little  porch  in  the  rear,  which  was  part 
of  the  playground  of  her  'scholars/ — for  in  those  days 
pupils  were  very  affectionately  called  'scholars.'  Her 
very  youthful  school  was  composed  of  possibly  twelve 
or  fifteen  boys  and  girls.  I  remember  particularly  the 
lame  boy,  who  always  had  the  first  ride  in  the  swing 
in  the  locust  tree  at  'recess/ 

"This  first  teacher  was  a  mother,  too,  to  all  her 
'scholars/  When  drowsy  they  were  often  carried  to  an 
inner  room — a  sitting-room — where  many  times  I  was 
taken  with  a  pair  of  little  chaps  and  laid  to  slumber 
on  a  little  made-down  pallet  on  the  floor.  She  would 
ofttimes  take  three  or  four  of  us  together;  and  I  can 
recall  how  my  playmate  and  I,  having  been  admonished 
into  silence,  grew  deeply  interested  in  looking  at  her 
husband,  a  spare  old  blind  man  sitting  always  by  the 
window,  which  had  its  shade  drawn  down.  After  a 
while  we  became  accustomed  to  the  idea,  and  when  our 
awe  had  subsided  we  used  to  sit  in  a  little  sewing  chair 
and  laugh  and  talk  in  whispers  and  give  imitations  of 
the  little  old  man  at  the  window." 

Riley  recalled  that  Mrs.  Neill  wore  a  white  cap  with 
ribbands — and  that  she  also  wore  a  mole  on  her  face 
"right  where  Abraham  Lincoln  wore  his,  and  that  it 
had  eye-winkers  in  it,  for  when  she  kissed  him  they 
tickled  his  nose."  Occasionally  a  large  boy  came  up 
from  town  and  during  recess  beat  a  tenor  drum  to  drive 
the  mice  away,  but  the  "scholars"  never  saw  any  mice. 
When  a  boy  was  guilty  of  swearing  Mrs.  Neill 
wrapped  a  rag  round  a  pen  holder,  dipped  it 
in  ashes  and  cleansed  his  mouth.  If  he  had 
kicked  another  boy  she  whipped  him  on  the  foot. 
Her  whippings  were  so  softly  administered  that  the 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  37 

"scholars"  rather  enjoyed  them,  particularly  the  sequel, 
when  she  led  the  penitent  to  a  little  Dame  Trot 
kitchen  and  gave  him  a  piece  of  fried  chicken,  or  a  big 
slice  of  white  bread  buttered  with  jam  or  jelly.  When 
the  time  came  to  call  the  children  to  their  books,  she 
tied  a  yellow  bandana  to  a  switch  and  cheerily  waved 
it  at  the  door.  Occasionally  one  "scholar"  (the  reader 
infers  his  name)  came  tardily  from  the  yard  wearily 
repeating,  "By  Double,  it's  Books!  By  Double,  it's 
Books !"  The  outside  of  the  schoolhouse  was  his  fav 
orite  side ;  he  preferred  to  climb  the  apple  trees  in  the 
schoolhouse  lot.  There  was  a  Harvest  tree  at  home, 
a  few  doors  away,  on  which  the  apples  "fairly  hurried 
ripe  for  him."  As  he  happily  said,  "they  dropped  to 
meet  me  half-way  up  the  tree."  The  school  yard  was 
the  place  for  happiness: 

"Best,  I  guess, 

Was  the  old  'Recess' — 
No  tedious  lesson  nor  irksome  rule — 
When  the  whole  round  World  was  as  sweet  to  me 
As  the  big  ripe  apple  I  brought  to  School." 

The  little  school  world  was  not  unlike  other  worlds 
of  its  kind  except,  perhaps,  that  it  had  a  larger  meas 
ure  of  freedom.  As  to  signs  in  it  of  future  greatness, 
there  was  none.  "The  Big  Tree  sprout,"  a  wit  lat 
terly  observed,  "was  not  bigger  than  any  other  sprouts. 
It  was  the  ordinary  thing ;  it  made  no  show ;  it  did  not 
suggest  a  future  son  of  fame."  Though  small,  the 
world  was  nevertheless  big  enough  to  grow  a  large 
tree  of  gratitude.  Like  the  log  cabin  in  which  the  Riley 
child  was  born,  the  little  schoolroom  was  a  thing  of 
blessed  memory.  The  "scholar"  always  remembered 
his  first  teacher  as  "a  very  dear  old  woman,  so  old 
she  was,"  he  said,  "that  she  died  one  afternoon — just 


38  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

like  falling  asleep.  She  was  so  tired,  so  worn  and  old. 
Who  knows?"  he  asked,  when  age  approached  his  own 
footsteps.  "She  may  be  rested  now.  Somewhere  she 
may  be  waiting  for  all  the  little  boys  and  girls  she 
loved  to  come  romping  in  again." 

Usually,  when  prompted  to  write,  Riley  looked  back 
ward  for  material.  The  pioneer  past  was  a  rich  land 
scape  for  him.  It  was  beautifully  blended  with  the 
hope  of  the  future.  The  Long  Ago  was  one  with  the 
golden  meadow  of  the  Great  To  Be.  He  would  find  a 
rustic  frame  on  the  walls  of  memory  and  make  a  pic 
ture  for  it  that  sometimes  surpassed  the  art  of  the 
painter.  Such  a  picture  is  the  popular  poem,  "Out  to 
Old  Aunt  Mary's."  Fortune  made  the  frame  for  it 
one  summer  in  his  childhood  days.  On  condition  that 
they  were  good  school  children,  the  mother  had  prom 
ised  "Bud"  and  his  elder  brother,  John,  a  holiday  with 
relatives  a  few  miles  away  on  Sugar  Creek,  and  then  a 
week's  visit  with  uncles  and  aunts  some  fifty  miles  dis 
tant  in  Morgan  County.  Passing  the  toll-gate  with  its 
well-sweep  pole,  the  boys  began  to  realize  their  dream 
in  the  sunshine  of  the  old  National  Road,  the  long  high 
way  that  was  lost  somewhere  in  the  wilderness  of  the 
West.  Near  Sugar  Creek  they  left  the  highway  for  a 
winding  road  past  fields  and  clearings  in  the  back 
woods.  The  elder  brother  often  recalled  the  welcome 
they  received  from  a  family  of  children  who  came 
romping  through  the  barn  lot  to  the  end  of  the  long 
lane,  up  which  he  and  "Bud"  hurried  on  the  wings  of 
joy.  As  the  poetic  brother  remembered  it, 

"They  pattered  along  in  the  dust  of  the  lane, 
As  light  as  the  tips  of  the  drops  of  the  rain." 

Riley  gives  briefly  his  own  account  of  the  visit  to 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  39 

Morgan  County.  "In  a  vague  way,"  said  he,  seeking  a 
tangible  basis  for  the  poem,  "I  had  in  mind  a  visit  to 
Mooresville  and  Martinsville,  when  Cousin  Rufus 
(Judge  William  R.  Hough  of  Greenfield)  and  my 
mother  drove  there  with  my  brother  and  me  and  my 
sister  Elva,  then  a  child  in  her  mother's  arms.  My 
brother  and  I  sat  on  a  seat  that  unfolded  from  the 
dashboard  in  the  manner  of  old-fashioned  vehicles  of 
the  time.  It  was  a  joyous  journey,  for  Cousin  Rufus 
was  the  j oiliest,  cheeriest  young  man  that  ever  lived 
and  there  was  always  a  song  on  his  lips.  We  drove 
from  Greenfield  to  Indianapolis,  where  we  stopped  for 
a  midday  meal.  At  Mooresville  we  visited  Uncle  James 
and  Aunt  Ann  Marine,  and  at  Martinsville,  Uncle 
Charles  and  Aunt  Hester  Marine."  At  both  places, 
"Bud's"  keen  appetite  was  satisfied  with  bountiful  old- 
fashioned  dinners — coffee  so  hot  it  spangled  his  eyes 
with  tears,  honey  in  the  comb,  quince  "preserves," 
juicy  pies,  and  jelly  and  jam  and  marmalade. 

There  were  several  other  visits,  so  that  the  poem  is 
truly  a  composite  one.  There  was  no  particular  Aunt 
Mary,  but  the  little  journey  to  Sugar  Creek  and  the 
longer  one  to  Morgan  County  formed  the  rustic  frame 
for  the  picture.  "The  simple,  child-felt  joy  of  those 
visits,"  to  quote  Riley's  words,  "was  as  warm  in  my 
memory  when  I  wrote  the  poem  as  when  a  boy  I  jogged 
back  on  the  dusty  road  to  Greenfield." 

Citizens  of  Greenfield  maintained  what  was  com 
monly  termed  a  Select  School  supported  by  subscrip 
tion,  a  spring  and  summer  term  of  twelve  weeks, 
"chiefly,"  said  an  old  resident,  "for  the  purpose  of 
keeping  idle  children  off  the  streets."  "It  is  desir 
able,"  said  the  school  notice,  "that  all  scholars  com 
mence  with  the  school,  as  it  will  be  to  their  material 


40  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

advantage,  as  well  as  an  accommodation  to  the  teacher." 
"Bud"  Riley  saw  in  it  no  "material  advantage."  He 
was  not  disposed  to  "accommodate  the  teacher"  in  that 
way.  School  in  June  and  July  was  a  violation  of  nat 
ural  laws.  Holidays,  alas,  were  rare,  with  intolerable 
periods  between :  "Fourth  of  July — Circus  Day — and 
Decoration  Day — but  give  him  Saturday,  .when  he 
could  play  and  play  and  play."  As  might  be  expected, 
the  humdrum  of  the  school  made  a  runaway  out  of 
him.  "I  made  a  break,"  said  he,  "for  the  open  world." 
One  day  he  hurried  away  in  his  bare  feet  down  a  dusty 
lane  to  a  cornfield;  another  day  across  an  orchard  to 
Brandywine  to  listen  to  the  splashing  of  the  swimmers. 
Another  day  he  waded  through  the  tall  grass  to  an  old 
graveyard.  Every  boy  knew  of  such  a  spot  in  the 
early  days.  Tom  Sawyer  and  Huckleberry  Finn  ran 
to  one  a  mile  or  two  from  the  village,  an  old-fashioned 
western  kind,  "with  a  crazy  board  fence  around 
it."  Such  a  cluster  of  pioneer  graves  the  Riley  lad 
and  his  shabby  companions  found  in  their  rambles, 
"save,"  said  Riley,  "that  it  was  enclosed  with  a  zigzag 
rail  fence  which  the  cows  pushed  down  for  grazing 
purposes."  Be  it  known,  since  the  lads  played  Robin 
Hood  among  the  broken  headstones  and  i:i  the  "Sher 
wood  Forest"  near,  that  their  little  souls  were  not 
steeped  in  melancholy.  Hard  by  stood  the  wide-spread 
ing  beech  with  its  lower  boughs  touching  the  earth, 
the  great  baobab  tree  of  Riley 's  childhood.  How  allur 
ing  it  was.  Made  magical  by  the  soft  summer  atmos 
phere  and  the  enchanting  vista  of  open  fields,  to  a  boy 
it  seemed  in  the  distance  a  gigantic  mound  of  verdure, 
over  which  he  might  roll  and  tumble  as  he  would  roll 
in  beds  of  blue-grass  on  the  hillside. 

Another  day,  smiling  and  laughing  with  his  little 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  41 

friends,  he  ran  away  from  school  to  the  mulberry 
tree.  Was  there  ever  anything  more  pathetic  to  a  child 
than  that  boy  sitting  at  his  desk  in  hot  weather,  waiting 
for  a  holiday  to  come  ?  And  anything  more  poetic  than 
his  anticipation  of  that  tree?  The  thought  of  it  as  he 
ran  onward  with  the  boys*  down  the  long  highway  was 
as  balmy  as  the  breeze  that  powdered  his  path  with  the 
blossoms  from  the  locust  trees.  "The  dust  in  the 
road,"  said  Riley,  "was  like  velvet.  The  odor  from 
ragweed  and  fennel  was  sweet  as*  the  scent  of  lilies 
in  the  Garden  of  Eden." 

Several  mulberry  trees  stood  in  fields  round  Green 
field,  a  venerable  one  in  the  edge  of  a  meadow,  east  of 
the  Old  Fair  Ground,  near  Little  Brandywine. 
"I  vividly  recall,"  said  Riley,  "how  we  used  to  scram 
ble  across  the  meadow  to  that  tree.  Not  until  we  were 
directly  beneath  it  did  the  birds,  voraciously  feeding  on 
the  berries,  see  us,  and  then  they  flew  away  in  a  whir 
of  confusion.  And  the  fruit  of  that  tree!  It  had  a 
strange  deliciousness.  Simply — it  was  to  all  other 
fruits  as  maple  syrup  is  to  all  other  syrups." 

A  rail  was  placed  in  the  fork  of  the  tree  for  boys  to 
climb.  That  rail  led  to  Fame  for  one  of  them — but 
how  blissfully  ignorant  they  were  of  all  her  trumpets 
and  temples ; 

"What  were  all  the  green  laurels  of  Fame  unto  me, 
With  my  brows  in  the  boughs  of  the  mulberry  tree  ?" 

Some  forty  years  after  the  poet's  boyhood,  Judge 
David  S.  Gooding  found  a  truant  youth  stealing  down 
the  back  ways  of  Greenfield,  who  tried  to  excuse  his 
truancy  to  the  Judge  on  the  ground  that  James  Whit- 
comb  Riley  ran  away  from  school  to  a  mulberry  tree. 
"Yes,  sir,"  returned  the  Judge,  with  his  usual  Doctor 


42  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Johnson  air,  "yes,  sir — and  when  you,  my  lad,  promise 
to  write  as  fine  a  poem  as  'The  Mulberry  Tree/  you 
may  run  away  from  school.  The  Riley  boy  was  wide 
awake  ;  he  played  Robin  Hood ;  he  saw  the  leafy  shade ; 
he  heard  the  flutter  of  birds ;  you  play  nothing,  you  see 
nothing,  hear  nothing;  you  are  skulking,  hiding  along 
the  creek  here  like  a  burglar.  Go  back  to  school! — 
read  your  books!" 

Whatever  may  be  said  in  behalf  of  modern  school 
days  with  all  their  conveniences  and  improvements, 
one  fact  is  not  disputed  by  those  who  recall  the  golden 
glory  of  days  gone  by:  that  the  children  of  the 
present  do  not  find  the  paradise  in  their  surroundings 
that  many  children  of  the  pioneer  day  found  in  theirs. 
Boys  and  girls  had  their  sorrows  then,  it  is  true,  but 
they  also  had  something  the  modern  child  too  often 
does  not  have — a  Child-heart  nourished  with  heaven- 
born  visions  and  realizations  of  joy  and  beauty.  Too 
often  the  modern  Child-heart  is  dwarfed  and  smothered 
by  the  glitter  of  deception,  show  and  sham.  "The 
Child-heart,"  the  poet  often  said,  and  the  older  he 
grew  the  more  fervidly  he  said  it : 

"The  Child-heart  is  so  strange  a  little  thing— 
So  mild — so  timorously  shy  and  small — 
When  grown-up  hearts  throb,  it  goes  scampering 
Behind  the  wall,  nor  dares  peer  out  at  all — 

but  could  it  peer  out,  could  it  come  to  us  from  the  dark 
ness,  could  it  light  up  this  dull  thing  we  call  maturity, 
could  we  become  children  in  trust,  in  truth,  in  love, 
then  civilization  would  enter  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  as 
Jesus  said — and  that  kingdom  would  be  here  and  now. 
I  know,"  the  poet  continued,  "the  Bible  says  to  put 
away  childish  things,  but  we  are  not  to  put  away  the 
Child-heart,  the  soul-reposing  belief  in  things,  the  pure, 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  43 

heavenly  absence  of  all  pretension — we  are  not  to  put 
that  away.  Why  is  it  I  can  not  read  mythology  to 
day?  Because  I  have  lost  faith  in  it.  Why,  when  I 
read  Pilgrim's  Progress,  I  could  see  the  whiskers  on 
Giant  Despair  as  plain  as  day.  But  I  could  not  have 
read  it  had  I  known  it  was  an  allegory.  All  of  these 
fancies  of  my  childhood  have  made  it  possible  for  me 
to  understand  children  now-a-days,  and  to  portray  them 
more  perfectly.  When  I  come  across  a  fanciful  child, 
just  about  as  superstitious  as  I  was,  I  know  how  to  talk 
to  it  and  better  how  to  write  about  the  things  it  loves." 

It  was  Riley's  boyhood  fortune  to  vibrate  between 
town  and  country.  "I  was  not  quite  a  country  boy," 
said  he;  "I  lived  in  a  little  village,  just  across  the  alley 
from  the  country.  I  associated  with  country  boys  and 
girls.  I  was  always  on  hand  at  the  country  gather 
ings.  When  I  went  to  see  my  little  friends  in  the  coun 
try  I  stayed  all  night.  I  have  slept  four-in-a-bed  after 
a  boisterous  hunt  with  the  boys  for  watermelons  in 
the  cornfields.  In  all  my  associations  with  country  peo 
ple  there  was  always  enough  distinction  for  me  to  see 
the  better  side  of  them  as  a  visitor." 

It  is  literally  true  that  the  poet  in  the  morning- 
tide  of  life  realized  the  happiness  of  childhood 
he  so  lovingly  describes  in  his  poems.  In  the 
vicinity  of  Greenfield,  that  village  of  three  or 
four  hundred  inhabitants,  he  found  a  wondrous 
world.  He  had  his  little  share  of  disappointments, 
of  course,  but  they  did  not  fill  his  childish  cup 
with  bitterness.  Within  wandering  distance  of  the 
town  he  found  the  Paradise  of  Childhood.  There  in 
season,  the  songs  of  orchard-birds  dripped  daily  from 
whispering  trees.  There  was  the  green  earth  and  the 
infinite  heavens  above  it  he  called  the  Child-World. 


44  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

'The  blossom-time  of  existence,"  he  wrote,  recalling 
his  boyhood  excursions; 

"How  always  fair  it  was  and  fresh  and  new — 
How  every  affluent  hour  heaped  heart  and  eyes 
With  treasures  of  surprise." 

Rapture  infinite,  mysteries  unriddled  but  retaining 
their  primitive  enchantment  still — such  the  Riley  lad 
found  in  and  around  Greenfield. 

After  the  poet  had  passed  his  fiftieth  mile-stone  he 
frequently  speculated  on  what  Heaven  would  be  like, 
and  the  sort  of  life  one  would  live  there.  "We  dream 
of  Heaven,"  said  he;  "we  were  in  Heaven  when  we 
were  children  and  did  not  know  it.  The  field  is  not 
limited,"  he  went  on;  "you  can  imagine  that  anything 
can  take  place  in  Heaven;  anything,  anything.  For 
instance,  you  might  imagine  that  things  would  go  on 
there  as  in  frontier  times  they  did  here  on  earth. 
Restore  the  rapture  and  rhythm  of  my  childhood  days 
and  I  can  not  think  of  many  improvements.  In  Heaven 
each  one  of  us  might  be  assigned  certain  things  to  do, 
certain  daily  tasks;  and  betimes  we  might  ourselves 
choose  to  do  the  thing  we  desire  to  do  most  of  all. 
Think  of  it!  Suppose  I  was  permitted  to  drop  on  my 
knees  again  and  inhale  the  fragrance  of  crushed  penny 
royal — permitted  to  go  back  to  a  day  in  my  childhood, 
the  day  I  first  wandered  away  with  my  little  friends 
to  the  mulberry  tree — permitted  to  have  the  whole, 
long  joyous  day  before  me  again:  be  happy,  ragged, 
barefooted,  with  everything  back  as  it  used  to 
be — even  to  the  stone-bruise  on  my  heel.  To  have 
over  again  one  of  those  dewy  mornings  of  fifty  years 
ago!" 

The    gracious    smile    of   those    days   of   old!      To 
Riley  it  was  the  glitter  of  the  sun  in  tropic  lands. 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  45 

Joyous  winds  winnowed  cares  from  life  as  chaff  from 
the  wheat.  His  blood  was  warm  as  wine.  All  things 
throbbed  with  the  pulse  of  spring. 

In  those  days  of  obscure  beginnings  the  recluse 
who  had  lived  in  the  cabin  by  Walden  Pond 
published-  his  Story  of  Life  in  the  Woods.  "The 
finest  qualities  of  our  nature,"  he  wrote,  "like  the  bloom 
of  fruits,  can  be  preserved  only  by  the  most  delicate 
handling.  Yet  we  do  not  treat  ourselves  nor  one 
another  thus  tenderly.  We  have  no  time  to  be  any 
thing  but  machines.  We  lay  up  treasures  where  moth 
and  rust  corrupt  and  where  thieves  break  through  and 
steal.  Wasting  our  substance  in  blind  obedience  to 
blundering  oracles,  we  contract  ourselves  in  a  nutshell 
of  frivolous  employment  and  creep  down  the  road  of 
life." 

Thus  the  recluse  made  his  protest  against  the 
vanities  of  civilized  life.  Soon  after  he  made 
it,  there  slipped  away  to  the  woods  near 
Greenfield  a  lad  ten  or  twelve  years  of  age,  who 
was  destined  to  make  a  similar  protest — not  as  a 
recluse,  not  harshly,  but  gently,  so  deftly  indeed  that 
the  people  began  to  nourish  the  finer  qualities  of  their 
nature  without  marking  the  precise  moment  when  the 
sunlight  came  to  warm  them  into  being.  Alone 
in  the  solitude,  the  lad  stood  on  the  shore 
of  a  little  "lake  of  light,"  whose  wine-colored  waters 
were  as  transparent  as  the  inland  sea  in  Walden 
Woods,  although  its  homely  name,  Tharpe's  Pond, 
lacked  the  euphony  of  the  classic  New  England  name. 
It  was  a  balmy  summer  day.  Wading  into  the  warm, 
"winey  waters"  up  to  his  waist,  he  gazed  through  a 
sky-window  in  the  roof  of  the  woods,  What  were  his 
thoughts? 


46  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"Did  he  sleep?    Did  he  dream? 

Did  he  wonder  and  doubt? 
Were  things  what  they  seem? 
Or  were  visions  about?" 

Forward  from  that  day,  he  was  never  wholly  alone  in 
the  world — never  just  James  Whitcomb  Riley.  There 
was  always  beside  him  the  lad  of  Used-To-Be,  what  he 
called  "the  quivering,  palpitating  spirit  of  youth." 
Sometimes  the  spirit  was  a  vague,  sometimes  a  vivid 
presence.  Whenever  it  was  vivid,  whenever  he  stood 
before  an  unexplored  world  with  the  rapture  of  the 
lad  who  stood  before  the  deep,  pathless  forest,  then 
he  could  think  the  thoughts,  live  the  hopes,  and  suffer 
the  tragedies  of  little  folks.  He  could  write  verse  for 
children.  "Often,"  said  Riley,  recalling  his  lost  youth, 
"I  stood  on  the  shore  of  the  pond  and  gazed  into  the 
interminable  mystery  of  the  woods.  Every  tree  was  a 
fabulous  consideration.  Deer  came  with  their  antlers 
up  to  question  the  approach  of  civilization.  There 
was  a  pigeon  roost  near.  It  was  glorious  at  twilight 
to  see  the  pigeons  drop  down  in  swarms  from  the 
clouds.  The  sky  was  full  of  fairies."  Sometimes  he 
went  alone  to  the  pond.  In  the  early  morning,  he  said, 
borrowing  the  dewy  lines  from  Tennyson,  the  trees 
were  wrapped  in  a  happy  mist 

"Like  that  which  kept  the  heart  of  Eden  green 
Before  the  useful  trouble  of  the  rain." 

The  day  the  Riley  lad  waded  into  the  sylvan  waters, 
that  day  "the  poet  was  born  in  his  soul."  For  the  first 
time  mysterious  voices  seemed  to  be  talking  to  him. 
They  were  feeble,  indistinct,  it  was  true ;  nevertheless, 
he  was  certain  their  murmur  had  a  personal  meaning. 
The  leaves  tried  to  whisper  to  him.  When  the  breeze 


THE  RHYME  OF  CHILDHOOD  47 

wandered  out  of  the  thicket  and  stirred  the  waters,  he 
began  to  wonder  what  the  ripples  were  saying.  There 
was  a  "deep,  purple  wine  of  shade"  in  the  forest,  but 
he  did  not  see  it  then, — not  for  a  fortnight  of  years. 
It  was  enough  as  the  seasons  came  and  went  that  he 
could  distinctly  recall  the  dawn  of  poetic  perception. 
Whenever  he  could  vividly  remember  the  boy  he  was 
then,  whenever  he  could  wade  through  "the  lake  of 
light"  in  the  woods,  whenever  he  could  translate  the 
song  of  the  birds,  whenever  he  could  match  the  music 
of  lisping  leaves  with  the  harmony  of  human  emotions, 
whenever  he  could  bask  in  the  sun  of  Memory  and 
feel  around  him  the  invisible  atmosphere  of  Love,  he 
could  write  poetry. 

Such  was  the  heavenly  land  of  childhood  for  which 
the  poet  could  never  find  jewels  enough  to  diamond 
with  his  praise.  The  green  earth  vibrated  with  love 
and  wonder.  There  was  ever  a  song  of  dewy  morn 
ings,  fragrant  meadows,  and  joyous  children.  Others 
might  sing  of  Heaven — he  rejoiced  that  they  did — but 
he  would  sing 

"The  praises  of  this  lower  Heaven  with  tireless  voice 

and  tongue, 
Even  as  the  Master  sanctions — while  the  heart  beats 

young." 


CHAPTER  III 
SALAD  DAYS — A  CRISIS — AND  A  TRADE 

MY  SALAD  days  when  I  was  green  in  judgment," 
says  Cleopatra  in  the  play — "and  soaked  as  a 
sponge  with  love-sickness,"  added  Riley,  re 
peating  her  lines.    "My  salad  days,"  said  he,  "began 
when  I  first  fell  in  love  with  a  schoolgirl  and  lasted 
till  my  majority.    If  it  is  a  question  of  verdancy,  they 
lasted  longer.    They  were  supposed  to  be  school-days, 
but  since  the  schoolroom  was  a  secondary  matter,  I  call 
them  salad  days.    I  was  uncommonly  green  in  judg 
ment." 

The  story  of  a  school-day  love  appears  in  his 
"Schoolboy  Silhouettes,"  written  at  a  later  period  for 
the  Indianapolis  Herald,  and  reiterates  the  opinion 
expressed  in  his  early  poem,  "Friday  Afternoon,"  that 

"The  old  school-day  romances 
Are  the  dearest  after  all." 

"Mousing  about  in  a  garret,  among  odds  and  ends, 
in  search  of  a  boot-leg  for  a  garden  hinge,"  Riley 
comes  upon  an  old  McGuffey  Reader,  and  promptly 
there  is  blown  to  him  "a  gust  of  memory  from  the  Long 
Ago."  He  finds  on  a  fly  leaf  a  schoolboy  couplet: 

"As  sure  as  the  vine  doth  the  stump  entwine 
Thou  art  the  lump  of  my  saccharine." 

"And  who  was  the  Lump?"  he  asks.  "Let  me  see — 
and  in  memory  there  suddenly  blossoms  into  life  the 
shy,  sweet  face  of  Lily — no  matter  what  the  other 

48 


SALAD  DAYS  49 

name,  since  a  long  while  ago  it  was  thrown  aside  like 
the  rubbish  in  the  garret.  But  Lily,  0  my  Lily,  comes 
back  and  reigns  again;  and  all  the  wine  of  love  that 
ripens  in  the  musty  bins  of  my  old  heart,  boils  up  and 
bubbles  o'er.  We  were  such  friends,  you  know — such 
tender,  loving  friends.  I  really  believe  our  teacher  (an 
old  maid  with  green  spectacles,  who  had  been  suffering 
with  neuralgia  for  a  week,  and  was  heartless  as  a 
hack-driver) — I  really  believe  she  hated  us — at  least 
she  always  kept  our  desks  far  apart  as  the  narrow 
limits  of  the  schoolroom  would  allow,  and  even  at 
'recess'  invariably  kept  one  of  us  in  and  sometimes 
both  for  some  real  or  fancied  misdemeanor."  The  boy 
had  thrown  "a  kiss  at  Lily  and  she  had  blushed  as  rosy 
as  the  apple  she  threw  him  in  return."  Miserere 
domine!  he  failed  to  catch  it,  and  it  "went  bumping  and 
rattling  among  the  slates  and  desks,  tattling  all  the 
tale  of  love."  After  a  scuffle  with  the  teacher,  the 
schoolboy  lover  was  cornered  in  the  woodbox, 
savagely  punched  with  the  wrong  end  of  the 
broom — and  made  to  stand  with  his  face  to 
the  wall  all  afternoon.  After  dismissal  he  was 
"dressed  down  in  the  good  old-fashioned  method  of  the 
time,"  and  sent  home.  On  leaving  the  schoolhouse  the 
boy  stole  a  hasty  glance  through  the  window  and  was 
astonished  to  discover  "the  green-eyed  dame  bending 
serenely  over  her  desk — eating  an  apple." 

Thus  a  schoolboy  romance  was  brought  to  a  tragic 
end,  which  accounts  for  his  clinging  some  fifteen  years 
after  to  a  folded  leaf  from  the  girl's  copy-book,  with  its 
quaint  old  axiom,  "There  is  no  ship  like  friendship." 
Lily's  slender  hand  had  traced  the  lines.  It  gave  him 
pleasure  to  dream  tenderly  of  the  school-day  episode, 
while — 


50  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"The  echo  of  a  measured  strain 
Beat  time  to  nothing  in  his  head, 
From  an  odd  corner  of  the  brain." 

His  interest  in  the  frivolities  of  sentiment  declined 
slowly.  Up  to  the  advent  of  his  bachelor  days,  he  car 
ried  love  ditties  in  his  pocket,  one  in  particular  by  his 
friend,  John  Hay,  which,  he  said,  "dripped  a  sticky 
kind  of  sweetness  that  made  the  society  of  young  girls 
interesting."  Love  ditties  made  the  company  of  maid 
ens  "more  intoxicating  than  things  that  delight  the 
palate." 

The  real  tragedy  of  the  schoolroom  however  was  not 
the  trivial  woes  of  school-day  love.  It  was  being 
indoors.  The  Riley  lad  sat  near  a  window  and 
just  beyond  it  was  the  border-line  of  the  Great 
Out-of-Doors,  which  by  all  the  laws  of  heart  and  mind 
he  considered  his  schoolhouse.  He  was  in  sight  of  the 
National  Road.  At  that  particular  time,  the  long 
highway  swarmed  with  evidences  of  the  Pike's  Peak  ex 
citement.  In  summer  and  autumn  there  were  all  sorts 
of  animals  in  the  cavalcade,  horses,  oxen,  mules  and 
donkeys,  crazy  vehicles  of  every  description,  and  men 
with  dogs  driving  hogs  and  turkeys  to  market.  Riley 
remembered  that  there  was  a  cow  hitched  to  a  prairie 
schooner.  "Lightning  Express"  was  painted  in  large 
letters  on  the  outside  of  the  tent  cloth  to  keep  the  emi 
grant's  spirits  up  and  the  spectators  smiling.  With 
such  a  lively  procession  passing  the  window  daily  it 
was  asking  the  impossible  that  a  schoolboy  should  be 
solemn  or  even  studious.  It  was  as  natural  for  him  to 
laugh  at  things  in  that  cavalcade  as  it  was  for  lambs 
to  bleat  or  the  chat  to  whistle. 

His  eyes  fell  one  day  on  a  picture  that  would  kindle 
the  interest  of  the  dullest  youth.  "I  recall  it  as  vividly," 


SALAD  DAYS  51 

he  wrote  in  the  "Silhouettes,"  "as  if  the  pic 
ture  were  before  me  now — a  bareheaded  man, 
perhaps  fifty  years  old,  a  fanatic  of  the  time, 
harnessed  like  a  horse,  drawing  a  two-wheeled 
cart  along  the  street.  He  was  a  well-made  man 
of  fifty  years,  perhaps,  rugged  as  the  horse  he  so  oddly 
represented.  He  was  smoothly  shaven  as  a  priest  and 
pink-faced  as  a  country  girl.  His  hair  was  light  and 
clipped  closely  to  the  scalp,  as  if  his  brains  had  grown 
too  warm  and  needed  cooling  off.  He  seemed  wholly 
unconscious  of  the  sensation  he  was  creating  in  our 
little  village.  Flocks  of  wondering  women  filled  the 
doors  and  windows  as  he  passed,  while  the  men-folks 
dropped  their  garden  tools  and  stood  staring  in  amaze 
ment.  Good  St.  Anthony  himself  could  not  have  re 
pressed  a  smile  at  the  antics  of  the  two-legged  centaur 
as  he  cantered  along,  clucking  to  himself  and  shying 
occasionally  at  an  oyster-can,  or  an  old  boot  lying  by 
the  sidewalk.  Following  at  his  heels,  the  rag-tag  and 
bob-tail  of  the  town  completed  the  procession.  The 
man  halted  opposite  the  schoolhouse  where  he  un 
hitched  himself — frisked  out  of  the  harness — snorted 
and  kicked — lay  down  and  rolled  over  a  time  or  two — 
shook  himself  and  then  abruptly  began  an  incoherent 
harangue  on  the  subject  of  religion,  interspersing  his 
remarks  with  love  songs  composed  by  himself,  printed 
copies  of  which  he  offered  to  the  music-loving  public 
at  the  rate  of  five  cents  per  ballad." 

Now  it  is  readily  seen  that  here  was  cause  for  merri 
ment.  The  child  of  the  doldrums  must  admit  that  such 
an  outbreak  would  seriously  damage  the  discipline  of  a 
schoolroom.  "Our  thrills  of  laughter  and  excitement," 
said  Riley,  "should  have  shaken  the  walls  and  rafters ; 
instead,  the  school  had  to  smother  its  mirth  and  put 


52  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

its  merry  features  to  sleep."  His  favorite  teacher,  Lee 
0.  Harris,  would  have  let  the  children  have  their  way 
for  one  hour  at  least.  "The  schooldame,"  he  rhymed 
pleasantly, 

"Should  have  promptly  resigned  her  position — 
Let  them  open  a  new  Pandemonium  there 
And  set  up  a  rival  Perdition." 

Instead  of  doing  that,  she  was  vexed  beyond  endur 
ance.  "Any  further  manifestation  of  this  uncalled-for 
levity,"  she  stormed,  "will  be  promptly  met  with  the 
punishment  it  richly  merits." 

Lessons  in  arithmetic  and  geography  were  reviewed 
and  then  the  class  came  in  the  Fifth  Reader  to  Irv- 
ing's  "Bobolink."  At  the  same  instant  the  fanatic 
across  the  way  "burst  into  an  eruption  of  song."  To 
the  Riley  youth  there  was  a  striking  similarity  in  the 
happiness  of  the  two  strange  birds.  The  man  in  the 
street  was  a  bobolink,  too,  "overcome  with  the  ecstasy 
of  his  own  music."  The  lad  envied  him  his  freedom 
as  the  Irving  schoolboy  had  envied  the  bobolink 
the  freedom  of  the  meadows.  "No  lessons,  no  task, 
no  school:  nothing  but  holiday,  frolic,  green  fields 
and  fine  weather."  While  the  class  recited  the  lesson, 
the  youthful  Riley  gave  wings  to  his  imagination.  He 
was  enchanted  with  his  foolish  fancies.  Among  them 
was  the  frame-work  of  "a  fairy  tale,  in  which 
a  naughty  bobolink  should  be  transformed  into  a  great 
wingless  man,  who  had  to  work  like  a  donkey,  and  bray 
songs  for  a  living." 

The  street  entertainment  was  fleeting,  but  beyond  it 
in  the  fields  and  woods  was  a  lodestar  that  drew  the 
lad's  affections  every  day.  Rather  than  "run  the  gaunt 
let  of  cross-examination,"  he  ran  to  that.  "In  the 


SALAD  DAYS  53 

woods,"  he  said,  "flinty,  two-edged  problems  of  arith 
metic  do  not  zip  round  my  ears."  "The  lad  got  his  edu 
cation,"  said  his  friend  Bill  Nye,  "by  listening  to  the 
inculcation  of  morals  and  then  sallying  forth  with  other 
lads  to  see  if  Turner's  plums  were  ripe.  What  glorious 
holidays  he  took  without  consent  of  the  teacher — 
rambling  in  the  woods  all  day,  gathering  nuts  and  paw 
paws  and  woodticks  and  mosquito  bites."  How  in 
scrutable  to  the  Riley  schoolboy  were  the  punishments 
the  teacher  inflicted,  and  they  were  still  inscrutable 
when  he  became  a  man.  How  pitiless  "the  melancholy 
tribunals  of  visitors,"  whose  way  was  to  look  reproach 
fully  upon  the  ignorance  of  boys  at  the  blackboard. 
"Never  a  sigh,"  he  wrote,  "for  the  forty  gipsy-hearted 
children,  panting  in  vain  for 

'The  feeling  of  the  breeze  upon  the  face — 
The  feeling  of  the  turf  beneath  the  feet ; 
And  no  walls  but  the  far-off  mountain-tops.'  " 

Boyhood  visions  of  jolly  seclusion  on  creek  bottoms — 
school  books  and  schoolmasters  could  not  rob  the  "luck 
less  urchin"  of  these.  "How  the  sunlight,"  Riley  wrote 
again,  "laughed  on  afternoons,  and  danced  about  the 
desks,  and  fluttered  up  and  down  the  walls  on  wings  of 
gold ;  and  how  it  glided  with  its  mystic  touch  each  new 
born  leaf  that  trembled  on  the  trees  and  filled  and 
flooded  all  the  happy  world  beyond,  until  the  very 
atmosphere  seemed  drunken  with  delight."  It  is  mani 
fest  that  Riley  in  his  youth  had  a  soul-hunger  for  free 
dom. 

"His  heart  no  formal  schools  would  brook; 
But  to  himself  the  world  he  took." 

"My  school  life,"  said  he,  "was  a  farce  all  the  way 
through.    My  Second  Reader  said:  'Some  little  boys  do 


64  JAMES  WIIITCOMB  RILEY 

not  love  their  books/  I  did  not  love  mine.  I  never 
heartily  learned  a  school-book  lesson  in  my  life.  When 
I  did  answer  a  question  the  answer  was  whispered  in 
my  ear  by  some  one.  I  copied  my  blackboard  work 
from  the  classmate  next  to  me.  I  could  have  learned 
had  I  tried,  but  my  obstinate  nature  could  not  brook 
the  fact  that  I  was  sent  to  school.  My  nature  was  full 
of  perversity.  I  tried  McGuffey's  Speller  but  the 
author  was  so  incoherent  in  his  thought  I  gave  up  in 
despair.  The  book  showed  haste  in  preparation  and 
was  doubtless  an  answer  to  the  call  of  a  greedy  pub 
lisher.  I  seldom  saw  the  inside  of  a  grammar,  nor 
have  I  any  desire  to  see  one  now."  (He  was  forty 
years  old  when  he  said  it.)  "Language  came  to  me 
naturally.  When  I  was  a  boy,"  he  went  on,  "schools 
were  run  on  the  principle  that  the  hardest  method  of 
learning  was  the  best.  Flogging  was  still  in  favor  as 
was  also  the  stupid  old  system  of  forcing  boys  to  learn 
by  rote.  My  father  was  an  old-fashioned  man,  very 
strict  in  his  rule  over  his  children.  One  of  his  rules 
applied  to  certain  books  they  were  forbidden  to  read. 
Naturally  I  wanted  to  read  those  books.  I  did  not  care 
a  rap  for  the  books  he  and  my  teachers  prescribed.  I 
read  the  forbidden  books,  although  I  had  to  steal  them 
from  the  library  to  do  it.  That  was  my  introduction  to 
mythology." 

Evidently  these  are  not  the  words  of  a  dissimulator. 
He  tells  the  truth  about  himself,  and  is  not  overmuch 
concerned  about  the  consequences.  It  happened  that 
way  and  what  had  happened  could  not  be  recalled. 

"I  was  born  thirty  years  ago,"  he  once  said  to  an 
interviewer,  "and  reared  at  Greenfield— a  motherly 
little  old  town,  at  whose  apron-strings  I  am  still  tied. 
I  was  sent  to  school  at  a  very  early  age — and  then  sent 


SALAD  DAYS  55 

back  again.  At  the  very  beginning  I  conceived  a  dis 
like  for  its  iron  discipline,  whose  sole  object  seemed 
to  be  to  harness  every  mental  energy  into  brute-like 
subjection,  and  then  drive  it  wherever  old  bat-eyed 
Tyranny  might  suggest.  I  could  barely  balance  myself 
on  one  leg  when  I  began  to  kick  in  the  traces  and  was 
speedily  labeled  a  bad  boy. 

"There  was  but  one  book  at  school  in  which  I  found 
a  single  interest — McGuffey's  Fourth  Reader."  (Love 
for  the  Fifth  Reader  came  after  his  school-days.)  "It 
was  the  tallest  book  known  and  to  boys  of  my  size  it 
was  a  matter  of  eternal  wonder  how  I  could  belong  to 
the  big  class  in  that  Reader.  At  sixteen  I  could  seldom 
repeat  the  simplest  schoolboy  speech  without  breaking 
down."  Once,  after  hesitating  with  the  usual  awkward 
repetition,  he  had  to  sit  down  "in  wordless  misery 
among  the  unfeeling  and  derisive  plaudits  of  the 
school."  After  that,  rather  than  repeat  the  harrowing 
experience,  he  deliberately  chose  punishment.  Some 
times  he  practised  his  declamation  half  an  hour  before 
the  ringing  of  the  bell,  but  his  heart  failed  him  when 
he  thought  of  appearing  before  the  school.  Once  he 
prepared  to  entertain  the  school  with  the  story  of 
"Casabianea,"  the  gallant  youth  of  thirteen,  who  stood 
on  the  burning  deck  of  a  ship-of-war  in  a  battle  off 
the  mouth  of  the  Nile.  He  trained  for  an  old-time 
Friday  afternoon  exercise,  was  told  by  his  teacher  to 
speak  out  clear  and  full — not  to  hang  his  head — not  to 
let  his  arms  hang  down  like  empty  sleeves — but  to 
stand  up  like  a  king  and  look  everybody  in  the  face — 
in  short,  take  "Casabianea"  for  his  model,  be  brave 
and  speak  out  like  a  man. 

"All  in  vain,"  said  Riley.  "When  Friday  afternoon 
came  I  failed  to  appear.  There  was  my  hero  of  the 


56  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Nile,  hinged  to  his  post  like  Corporal  Doubledick,  firm 
as  a  rock  and  brave  as  Mars : 

'Beautiful  and  bright  he  stood, 
As  born  to  rule  the  storm ; 
A  creature  of  heroic  blood, 
A  proud,  though  child-like  form.' 

There  he  stood  while  sailors  deserted  the  sinking  ship 
and  here  was  I  in  Greenfield,  the  most  incurable  coward 
that  ever  had  the  honor  of  birth  on  Hoosier  soil;  a 
timid,  backward  boy  as  I  have  been  a  bashful  man.  In 
some  way,  unaccountable  to  me,  I  was  bereft  of  choice. 
The  schoolroom  seemed  a  little  firmament,  all  bright 
with  gleaming  eyes.  I  could  not  keep  from  blanching. 
Doom  came  unbidden." 

One  of  the  Fourth  Reader  incidents  borders  on  the 
pathetic.  "My  eccentricities,"  he  observed  long  years 
after  the  incident  when  all  had  been  forgiven,  "were 
not  only  the  dismay  of  the  schoolroom,  but  a  source  of 
great  torment  to  my  father  whom  I  loved  and  respected, 
for  all  I  dodged  about  a  great  deal  to  avoid  obeying 
him.  We  were  just  beginning  the  new  Reader,  and  as 
usual  I  had  finished  it  before  the  class  had  read  ten 
lessons.  There  were  several  poems  in  the  book  and 
one  of  these,  The  Dying  Soldier/  I  read  over  and  over 
again.  I  had  to  cry  when  I  read  it." 

Old  schoolboys  and  schoolgirls  remember  it  still a 

Blue  soldier  and  a  Gray,  who  would  never  again  see 
"the  daylight's  soft  surprise"— 

"Two  soldiers,  lying  as  they  fell 

Upon  the  reddened  clay — 
In  day-time,  foes ;  at  night,  in  peace, 
Breathing  their  lives  away." 

Fate  only  had  made   them   foes.    Death   leveled   all. 


SALAD  DAYS  57 

Under  the  midnight  moon  and  stars — brought  face  to 
face  before  God's  mercy-seat,  a  softened  feeling  rose: 

"Forgive  each  other  while  we  may; 

Life's  but  a  weary  game, 
And,  right  or  wrong,  the  morning  sun 
Will  find  us,  dead,  the  same." 

So  the  sun  did  find  them.  The  Angel  of  Love  came  to 
the  battle-plain  and  mantled  their  lifeless  forms  with 
the  vesture  of  peace : 

"And  a  little  girl  with  golden  hair, 
And  one  with  dark  eyes  bright, 
On  Hampshire's  hills,  and  Georgia's  plain, 
Were  fatherless  that  night." 

"Well,"  Riley  continued,  "the  class  came  to  those 
pathetic  lines.  I  knew  my  place  in  the  class  and  also 
knew  I  could  not  read  them  before  the  class  without 
tears.  I  resolved  not  to  cry  in  public,  and  since  there 
was  only  one  way  out  of  it,  I  ran  away.  While  the 
teacher's  back  was  turned  I  slipped  through  the  door 
into  the  street  and  had  hardly  left  the  schoolhouse  when 
I  met  my  father,  who  of  course  had  immediately  to 
know  what  I  was  doing  away  from  school.  I  had  just 
read  the  life  of  Washington  and  concluded  I  would  try 
the  cherry-tree  act.  I  told  the  truth,  explained  to  my 
father  that  I  did  not  want  to  cry  before  the  school. 
His  eyes  flashed  wrath  like  sparks  from  a  furnace  fire 
I  thought  that  was  punishment  enough,  but  when  he 
severely  whipped  me,  I  experienced  a  revulsive  feeling 
and  for  several  years  after  I  seldom  thought  of  him 
kindly.  I  don't  blame  him  now.  His  nature  was  such 
that  he  could  not  appreciate  the  situation.  He  doubt 
less  thought  my  explanation  an  excuse  to  get  out  of 
school.  But  the  injustice  of  it  I  could  not  forget." 
The  ways  of  moral  mentors,  the  youthful  Riley  could 


58  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

not  understand.  Indeed,  it  puzzled  him  when  he  grew 
to  manhood.  Why  (in  substance)  he  asked,  should  a 
schoolmaster  be  thrown  into  a  state  of  suspense  because 
the  boy  Audubon  devoted  more  time  to  birds  in  the 
garden  than  to  books  on  his  desk?  What  is  it  in  the 
wayward  and  impulsive  natures  of  boys  and  girls  that 
their  elders  can  not  brook?  Why  is  it  that  fathers  and 
mothers  so  covetously  cherish  the  divine  command, 
"Children,  obey  your  parents,"  and  yet  find  no  warm 
nook  within  the  breast  for  that  houseless  truth,  the  old 
Lapland  song,  that  goes  wailing  through  the  world : 

"A  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
And  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long,  long  thoughts"? 

The  sequel  to  this  estrangement  from  his  father  oc 
curred  twenty  years  later.  After  drifting  about  here 
and  there  for  a  decade,  Riley  came  to  try  his  fortune 
in  Indianapolis.  "I  began  to  write  poetry,"  said  he, 
"and  in  time  became  rather  notorious  for  that.  The 
people  of  the  city  made  a  great  deal  of  me,  and  now 
and  then  rumors  of  my  reputation  reached  the  little 
town  where  my  father  lived.  He  could  not  see  what 
the  people  saw  in  those  things  of  mine,  no  more  than 
Mark  Twain's  father  could  appreciate  the  humorous 
antics  and  stories  the  author  related  of  himself  in  Tom 
Sawyer.  He  could  not  see  why  my  dialect  was  worth 
so  much  money,  and  finally  gave  up  trying  to  under 
stand  it.  I  went  out  to  see  him  frequently,  and  one 
day  persuaded  him  to  return  with  me.  When  we 
reached  the  city,  we  went  to  a  clothing  store.  He  was 
pretty  well  dressed  for  a  country  lawyer  but  not  quite 
as  well  as  I  thought  he  ought  to  be  for  the  city.  I 
bought  him  a  new  outfit  from  hat  to  shoes,  and  then 
took  him  home  with  me  to  the  Denison  Hotel.  I  told 
the  landlord  we  wanted  the  best  room  in  the  house. 


SALAD  DAYS  59 

After  dinner  we  walked  about  the  city  together.  He 
was  pointed  out  to  friends  as  my  father.  I  tell  you 
that  did  me  good.  It  was  another  proud  day  in  my  life. 
Neither  of  us  recalled  the  misunderstanding  of  long 
ago." 

The  schoolboy's  Fourth  Reader  period  was  followed 
by  the  interval  of  "worthless  accomplishments"  he 
called  his  "Dime-novel-and-Byronic-verse  age."  Both 
home  and  school  forbade  those  pleasures.  In  the  "Sil 
houettes"  he  tells  of  successful  ventures  with  novels 
in  the  schoolroom.  He  attributed  his  artifice  to  an  old 
desk-mate,  but  he  himself  was  the  "unreadable  char 
acter"  he  describes.  He  could  secrete  things  in  his  desk 
and  have  them,  as  he  said,  "handy  as  'good  morning.1 " 
He  had  nerve  and  was  the  leader  on  truant  excursions, 
as  well  as  the  hero  of  commotions  in  the  schoolroom 
when  he  returned  with  a  bottle  of  grasshoppers  in  his 
pocket.  If  boys  got  into  dilemmas  their  "old  desk- 
mate"  could  not  get  them  out  of,  the  case  was  indeed 
hopeless.  He  knew  all  sorts  of  turns  to  make  and 
"wore  his  conscience  as  carelessly  as  he  did  his  cap." 
He  was  proud  of  all  emergencies  which  required  his 
advice,  and,  when  enforcing  his  opinions,  had  a  pecu 
liar  way  of  impressing  his  clients  on  the  breast  with 
his  fore-finger. 

For  a  while  he  read  novels  quite  successfully  during 
school  hours  in  the  manner  of  Irving's  enjoyment  of 
Robinson  Crusoe,  by  snatching  hasty  moments  for  read 
ing  under  the  shelter  of  his  desk.  He  eluded  the  teach 
er's  eye,  he  says  in  the  "Silhouettes,"  by  holding  the 
tabooed  pamphlet  on  his  geography,  and  that  on  his 
knee  with  one  hand  ever  ready  to  shove  the  story  in 
his  desk,  leaving  his  eyes  apparently  on  his  lesson. 
One  day  the  movement  of  his  arm  or  the  guilty  look  on 


60  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

his  face  led  to  discovery,  and  he  was  waylaid  by  the 
teacher  and  punished.  Since  he  defied  all  rules  of  time 
and  place,  he  forthwith  provided  his  need  with  a 
clothes-pin  (one  of  the  spring  variety)  and  a  rubber 
band  attached.  Fastening  the  band  to  the  back 
of  his  desk  inside,  he  clamped  the  novel  in  the  spring, 
stretched  the  band  forward  for  the  convenience  of  the 
eye,  and  read  the  alluring  pages  without  fear  of  detec 
tion.  When  the  teacher  came  peaking  around,  all  he 
had  to  do  was  to  raise  his  thumb  and  the  rubber 
hid  the  little  old  "Prairie  Flower"  in  a  jiffy. 

Riley  really  desired  an  education,  but  could  not 
find  in  "  the  schoolroom  the  nourishment  his 
heart  required.  He  envied  the  pupils  of  an 
older  time,  whose  fortune  it  was  to  go  to  school 
to  Chiron,  who  taught  them  horsemanship,  how  to  cure 
diseases,  how  to  play  on  the  harp,  and  other  branches 
of  knowledge,  instead  of  giving  instruction  in  grammar 
and  arithmetic.  And  particularly  he  envied  Jason,  the 
athletic  youth,  who  resolved  to  seek  his  fortune  in  the 
world  without  asking  the  teacher's  advice  or  telling 
him  anything  about  it. 

Such  a  failure  as  Riley's  in  arithmetic  has  seldom 
been  recorded.  "I  could  not,"  said  he,  "tell  twice  ten 
from  twice  eternity."  History  was  his  bete  noir.  He 
knew  nothing  of  Columbus,  or  "the  glorious  country 
expressly  discovered  for  the  purpose  of  industry  and 
learning,"  as  his  teacher  would  have  him  believe.  He 
did  not  have,  as  he  wrote  in  one  of  his  prose  sketches, 
"the  apt  way  of  skimming  down  the  placid  rills  of 
learning."  But  he  did  possess  the  "extraordinary 
knack  of  acquiring  such  information  as  was  not  taught 
at  school,"  and,  as  he  was  told,  had  no  place  in  the  busy 
hive  of  knowledge.  He  knew  all  about  Captain  Kidd — 


THE  POET'S  HANDWRITING  THE  YEAR  OF  His  VISION 


His  HANDWRITING  TWENTY-THREE  YEARS  LATER 


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SALAD  DAYS  61 

could  sing  the  history  of  the  pirate  from  A  to  Izzard, 
sing  it  with  more  interest  than  his  schoolmates  sang 
geography.  He  knew  how  to  slip  a  chip  under  the 
corner  of  the  school  clock  in  order  to  tilt  it  out  of  bal 
ance  and  time,  how  to  ride  a  horse  face  backward,  and 
sometimes  his  story  of  a  gallop  to  the  woods  had  a  de 
moralizing  effect  on  the  "Industrial  Hive." 

As  might  be  expected,  Nemesis  crossed  his  path. 
The  horse  ran  away  and  brought  his  reckless  riding 
to  an  end.  As  Riley  remarked  when  older,  flavoring 
his  thought  with  the  humor  from  "Peter  Bell" :  "Old 
Retribution  came  down  the  highway  and  left  me  in  a 
half -conscious  heap  at  the  roadside  with 

.    .    .    .    'dim  recollections 
Of  pedlers  tramping  on  their  rounds ; 
Milk-pans  and  pails;  and  odd  collections 
Of  saws  and  proverbs :  and  reflections 
Old  parsons  make  in  burying-grounds.'  " 

Nemesis  was  present  at  other  times.  One  winter 
day  she  was  with  George  Kingry,  a  burly  youth, 
and  a  half-dozen  smaller  boys,  including  the  Riley 
lad,  while  skating  on  a  cranberry  marsh.  Like  so  many 
links  in  a  chain,  the  boys  were  holding  on  to  coat-tails 
when  they  crashed  through  the  ice  into  nine  feet  of 
water.  After  floundering  about,  Kkigry  caught  hold 
of  a  willow  bough  and  brought  his  strand  of  urchins 
to  shore. 

"You  seem  to  have  repaired  to  other  shrines  besides 
Tharpe's  Pond,"  said  his  clergyman  friend,  Myron 
Reed,  to  whom  Riley  told  the  incident.  "Oh,"  returned 
Riley,  "I  was  not  Apollo's  ward  all  the  time."  He  once 
compared  notes  with  Joe  Jefferson.  "There  are  certain 
facts  of  our  boyhood  —  yours  and  mine,"  said 
Jefferson,  "about  which  there  can  be  no  mis- 


G2  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

take.  Evidently  we  were  bad  boys  and  hard 
to  manage."  On  various  occasions  Riley  openly 
admitted  he  was  not  a  Model  Boy.  "Symptoms 
of  evil,"  he  said,  "broke  out  early  on  me."  He  was  no 
more  a  Model  Boy  on  the  banks  of  Brandywine  than 
was  Mark  Twain  on  the  banks  of  the  Mississippi.  The 
latter's  allusion  to  that  character  is  too  good  for  omis 
sion:  "If  the  Model  Boy,"  says  Twain,  "was  in  the 
Sunday-school,  I  did  not  see  him.  The  Model  Boy  of 
my  time — we  never  had  but  one — was  perfect :  perfect 
in  manners,  perfect  in  dress,  perfect  in  conduct,  per 
fect  in  filial  piety,  perfect  in  exterior  godliness ;  but  at 
bottom  he  was  a  prig;  and  as  for  the  contents  of  his 
skull,  they  could  have  changed  place  with  the  contents 
of  a  pie,  and  nobody  would  have  been  the  worse  off 
for  it  but  the  pie." 

From  Mark  Twain  to  Montaigne — Riley  once  ob 
served — there  is  invariably  independence  of  thought 
and  action  in  the  youth  of  men  who  have  left  the  im 
press  of  greatness  on  their  time.  Montaigne  was 
brought  up  without  rigor  or  compulsion,  brought  up, 
as  he  said,  "in  all  mildnesse  and  libertie."  There  was  a 
lack  of  discipline  during  his  impressionable  years,  and 
that,  according  to  Riley,  gave  charm  to  the  old  French 
man's  life  and  work. 

In  those  days  of  dissatisfaction  and  rambling 
endeavor,  there  was  one  exception,  that  in  con 
trast  to  his  woes  of  the  schoolroom  was  as  sun 
light  unto  lamplight, — the  influence  upon  the  Riley 
youth  of  a  friend  whose  heart  and  hand  were 
ever  warm  and  sympathetic,  the  "Schoolmaster  and 
Songmaster"  enshrined  in  grateful  memory,  the  benign 
monitor  of  old  Masonic  Hall  and  Greenfield  Academy. 


SALAD  DAYS  63 

It  was  not  in  the  Hall  or  Academy  however  that  the 
influence  was  generative. 

The  Schoolmaster  became  the  author  of  such  delect 
able  verse  as  "The  Bonny  Brown  Quail,"  "Along  the 
Banks  of  Brandywine,"  "Moonlight  in  the  Forest," 
and  "Crooked  Jim."  To  the  youth  with  "poetic  symp 
toms"  he  was  from  the  first  a  positive  inspiration.  The 
scene  of  that  inspiration  was  chiefly  the  Schoolmaster's 
home  and  vicinity,  some  two  miles  from  town  on  Little 
Brandywine.  There  the  pupil  found  refuge  from 
grammar  and  arithmetic.  There  he  was  welcome  at 
all  hours  of  the  day — and  the  night,  too,  for  he  often 
remained  over,  that  he  might  have  more  abundantly 
the  inspiration  he  coveted.  He  was  in  the  academy  of 
outdoor  life.  He  found  there,  to  a  large  degree,  the 
counterpart  of  the  school  he  had  read  about  in  mythol 
ogy.  He  had  a  singer  for  a  schoolmaster,  one  who 
talked  about  the  birth  of  Time,  the  wondrous  earth,  the 
treasures  of  the  hills,  the  language  of  birds,  of  health 
and  the  mission  of  life,  and  of  mysteries  that  too  long 
had  been  hidden  from  the  knowledge  of  mankind.  In 
that  outdoor  school,  Nature  played  on  "a  harp  of  gold 
with  a  golden  key."  Like  the  lads  of  old,  the  youthful 
Riley  could  lie  on  the  dry  leaves  of  the  woods  and  think 
and  dream,  and  return  to  the  house  at  night  and  sleep 
a  wholesome  sleep.  No  waste  of  time  in  remorse, 
with  which  life  in  the  town  sometimes  afflicted  him. 
He  could  grow  up  to  the  full  height  of  manhood  as 
Jason  had  grown  under  the  excellent  direction  of 
Chiron.  Alas!  the  Schoolmaster's  instruction  did  not 
wholly  correspond  to  Chiron's  training.  It  was  not 
ideal.  Nevertheless,  it  was  sufficiently  enchanting  to 
make  the  pupil  eternally  grateful. 


64  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

The  Schoolmaster  was  a  wise  guide  in  reading.  He 
gave  the  youth  Cooper's  novels  and  thus  lifted  the  cur 
tain  on  American  scenery  and  adventures  on  the 
frontier  of  civilization.  Bret  Harte  told  him  stories 
of  dare-devil,  impulsive,  courageous  men,  toiling  in  the 
morning-time  of  a  state — "Bret  Harte,"  the  pupil  said, 
"the  subtlest  manipulator  of  English  on  the  face  of  the 
earth."  Dickens  enchanted  him.  The  Master  thought 
the  pupil  should  know  something  of  the  Waverley 
novels. 

"Read  Ivarihoe,"  said  he. 

"I  don't  like  Scott,"  returned  the  pupil. 

"Then  try  Middlemarch." 

"Too  sad;  I  don't  like  heavy  things;  I  want  to  be 
interested." 

As  the  seasons  came  and  went  there  was  communion 
with  field  and  woodland.  Hints  of  a  coming  poet  were 
plentiful — bits  of  verse  here  and  there  on  scraps  of 
paper  and  the  fly  leaves  of  old  books.  Often  Master  and 
pupil  strolled  together  through  the  "sugar  orchards" 
and  beyond  them  into  the  depths  of  the  wild ;  often  (as 
the  Master  wrote) 

"They  heard  the  great  fond  heart  of  Nature  beat, 
And  felt  an  impulse  in  the  solitude 
To  cast  themselves  in  homage  at  her  feet." 

When  the  pupil  became  ecstatic  over  the  vales  of  the 
Elburz  Mountains,  and  the  golden  prime  of  old  Bagdad 
days,  as  told  in  the  Persian  tale  he  was  reading,  the 
Schoolmaster  pointed  to  the  enchanted  land  of  the 
present,  "right  here  where  we  stand,"  said  he,  "richer 
fruited  than  anything  Aladdin  ever  found  in  the 
wizard's  cave.  A  mightier  power  than  slave  of  lamp  or 
ring  waves  her  wand  above  the  American  woods." 


SALAD  DAYS  65 

When  the  pupil  became  a  poet  he  did  not  neglect  the 
early  lesson.  "My  realm  is  at  home,"  he  wrote; 

"Go,  ye  bards  of  classic  themes 
Pipe  your  songs  by  classic  streams; 

I  will  sing  of  black  haws,  May-apples,  and  pennyroyal ; 
of  hazel  thickets,  sycamores,  and  shellbark  hickories 
in  the  pathless  woods." 

Longfellow  walking  with  his  favorite  teacher  amid 
the  groves  of  Brunswick  did  not  love  him  more  affec 
tionately  than  Riley  loved  the  Schoolmaster.  Both 
praised  their  teachers  in  prose  and  verse.  Riley's 
tributes  in  prose  were  summed  up  in  a  brief  address 
before  an  Indiana  State  Teachers'  Assembly,  after  he 
had  passed  the  meridian  of  life.  There  was  no  diminu 
tion  of  gratitude : — 

"My  last  teacher,"  he  said,  "I  remember  with  an 
affection  no  less  fervent  than  my  first.  He  was  a  man 
of  many  gifts,  a  profound  lover  of  literature  and  a 
modest  producer  in  story  and  in  song,  in  history,  and 
even  in  romance  and  drama,  although  his  life-effort 
was  given  first  of  all  to  education.  To  him  I  owe  pos 
sibly  the  first  gratitude  of  my  heart  and  soul,  since, 
after  a  brief  warfare,  upon  our  first  acquaintance  as 
teacher  and  pupil,  he  informed  me  gently  but  firmly 
that  since  I  was  so  persistent  in  secretly  reading  novels 
during  school  hours  he  would  insist  upon  his  right  to 
choose  the  novel  I  should  read,  whereupon  the 
'Beadle'  and  'Munro'  dime  novels  were  discarded  for 
masterpieces  of  fiction ;  so  that  it  may  be  virtually  re 
corded  that  the  first  study  of  literature  in  a  Hoosier 
country  school  was  (perhaps  very  consciously)  intro 
duced  by  my  first  of  literary  friends  and  inspirers,  Cap 
tain  Lee  O.  Harris  of  Greenfield." 


66  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Notwithstanding  the  humdrum  of  his  school-days, 
Riley  was  inclined  to  think  of  his  teachers  as  a  "long 
list  of  benefactors."  He  pleasantly  remembered  John 
W.  Lacy,  his  teacher  in  rhetoric.  Even  "the  rigid 
gentleman  with  green  goggles"  who  lifted  him  from 
the  desk  by  the  ears  when  he  was  a  boy,  and  whom  he 
resolved  to  thrash  when  he  became  a  man — even  he  was 
given  a  fraction  of  his  gratitude. 

Riley  had  a  brief  schoolroom  experience  after  his 
"reconstruction  period"  with  Captain  Harris — so  brief 
and  incoherent  indeed  that  he  seldom  honored  it  with 
consideration.  In  January,  1870,  the  new  school  build 
ing  "was  ready  for  occupation,"  said  the  county  paper. 
"School  opened  with  236  pupils."  Among  them  was 
"James  W.  Riley."  Here  seems  to  have  been  the  first 
time  he  was  dignified  with  so  long  a  name.  He  chose 
reading,  rhetoric  and  arithmetic.  Doctor  William  M. 
Pierson,  a  classmate  and  lifelong  friend,  observed  that 
in  rhetoric  Riley  "did  not  study  figures  of  speech  and 
style ;  he  delved  in  the  beauties  of  literature  found  in 
the  quotations."  Things  went  fairly  well  for  six  weeks 
when  he  received  a  weekly  report  which  brought  his 
public  school-days  to  an  end.  There  was  a  black  line  on 
the  report,  "the  Black  Line  of  Latitude,"  said  Riley, 
"that  ran  across  my  world  on  the  sixtieth  parallel. 
Below  it  was  the  Pit  of  Failure,  the  dark  discreditable 
region  of  reproach  and  misdemeanors,  that  kept  me  in 
a  state  of  suspense  from  the  hour  the  bell  rang  till 
dismissal.  One  day  I  dropped  so  perilously  near  the 
black  line  in  Arithmetic,  I  quit  school  forever."  Like 
Herbert  Spencer,  "he  could  not  pass  the  examination." 
Like  Edison,  "he  did  not  have  the  apparatus." 

Prior  to  quitting  school  Riley  had  been  chosen  editor 
of  The  Criterion,  a  school  paper  to  which  he  gave 


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68  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

the  ambitious  motto:  "Veni,  vidi,  vici."  It  "had 
struggled  into  existence,"  he  wrote,  "under  grievous 
disadvantages."  The  second  issue  (and  the  last),  two 
dozen  pages  of  foolscap,  written  with  lead  pencil  and 
bound  tastefully  in  pamphlet  form,  appeared  March  14, 
1870,  and  as  customaiy  was  read  by  its  editor  before 
a  school  society.  "It  was  my  first  venture  in  the  news 
paper  field,"  said  he,  in  humorous  vein  years  after, 
"but  I  didn't  see  anything  nor  conquer  anything.  I 
strangled  the  infant  with  a  dose  of  verbosity." 

On  the  last  page  appeared  "A  Fragment,"  which,  he 
sportively  said,  "was  my  first  poetic  effort  to  see  the 
light  of  publication."  The  "Fragment"  mourned  the 
decease  of  the  rival  school  paper,  The  Amendment, 
whose  fate  also  was  to  die  prematurely: 

"Swiftly  and  surely 
With  a  frenzied  cry,  demurely 
Into  the  valley  of  death 

Crossed  The  Amendment. 

"Quick,  like  a  f  o'-hoss  team, 
With  a  Shawnee  warrior  scream 
Into  the  boiling  stream 

Dove  The  Amendment. 

"Still  down  and  down  they  pass — • 
Green  o'er  their  graves  the  grass — • 
Down  in  the  valley  of  death 

Lies  The  Amendment." 

The  subject  of  these  pages  had  now  passed  into  his 
twentieth  year.  He  had  come  to  a  crisis  in  his  life. 
Indeed  the  previous  summer,  while  hoeing  in  a  garden 
with  his  father  one  hot  evening,  he  had  profited  by 
what  may  seem  to  some  a  crisis  of  minor  significance  ; 
but  it  was  not  a  minor  incident  to  him.  His  faculties 


SALAD  DAYS  69 

hungered  for  expansion  in  other  fields  of  labor.  For 
the  first  time  his  father  discovered  there  was  granite 
in  the  son's  will.  "My  father,"  said  Riley,  recalling 
the  incident,  "had  moved  to  the  edge  of  town  and  was 
tending  a  garden.  He  was  a  good  gardener.  I  was 
poor.  Like  Rumty  Wilfer,  I  had  never  yet  obtained 
the  modest  object  of  my  ambition,  which  was  to  wear  a 
complete  new  suit  of  clothes,  hat  and  boots  included, 
at  one  time.  I  desired  to  go  into  'society/  and  one 
evening  resolved  to  make  the  attempt.  I  stood  before 
the  glass,  in  an  old  suit  and  was  putting  on  a  paper 
collar  and  a  butterfly  tie.  My  big  toe  was  coming 
through  my  shoe,  and  to  give  my  white  sock  the  color 
of  the  shoe  at  that  point  I  stained  my  toe  with  ink. 
With  his  usual  contempt  for  'fashion/  my  father  looked 
at  me  from  the  tail  of  his  eye  and  said  with  the  curl 
of  the  lip,  'Well,  my  son,  now  that  you  are  ready  to  go 
into  society,  we'll  go  into  the  garden  and  hoe  weeds.' 
I  followed  him.  After  we  had  hoed  a  little  while,  I 
fell  behind  and  grew  melancholy  and  saucy.  'You 
don't  seem  to  like  work'  said  my  father  sarcastically. 
'No!'  I  thundered.  Seizing  the  end  of  my  hoe-handle 
with  both  hands,  I  flung  it  into  a  neighbor  lot,  leaped 
the  fence  and  walked  down-town,  leaving  my  father 
white  with  rage.  In  about  an  hour  I  came  back. 
Leaning  against  the  fence,  I  said,  'Father,  I  am  here, 
not  to  hoe  weeds,  but  to  tell  you  I  am  sorry  I  spoke  to 
you  in  anger.'  He  gazed  at  me  in  astonishment.  The 
silence  was  painful.  Then  he  said  in  a  tone  of  tender 
ness  I  had  not  heard  before,  'My  son,  come  down  to 
the  office  to-night.  I  want  to  talk  to  you.'  At  the  office 
we  came  to  an  understanding.  He  went  his  way  and  I 
went  mine." 

Tradition  has  it  that  he  ran  down  an  alley  from  the 


70  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

garden  muttering  to  himself  "The  Farewell  to  the 
Farm,"  a  country  poet's  fiery  resolve, — 

"Not  to  be  a  farmer, 
Not  to  plow  the  sod, 
Nor  hop  another  clod." 

"Was  it  tradition?"  he  was  asked  some  thirty  years 
after.  "Fact  and  tradition,"  he  promptly  returned ;  "I 
used  language  that  would  sear  the  walls  of  a  synagogue. 
I  resolved  never  to  work  with  a  hoe  again — and  I  never 
did."  For  several  years  following,  his  paternal  rela 
tions  were  strained — strained  at  times  to  a  tension  that 
was  painful — by  just  such  a  grievance  as  that  which 
beset  Mark  Twain  and  his  father.  They  were  almost 
/always  on  distant  terms — as  Twain  said,  they  were  in  a 
state  of  armed  neutrality. 

Riley's  garden  resolution  may.  seem  to  some  an  ab 
rupt  disapproval  of  farming.  Nothing  could  be  more 
foreign  to  truth.  In  his  sight,  a  thrifty  cornfield  was  as 
essential  to  the  progress  of  man  as  a  poem.  But  there 
were  men  designed  of  Heaven  for  the  agricultural  pur 
suit.  He  was  not  one  of  them.  He  had  labored  in  his 
little  solitude  long  enough.  There  was  budding  within 
him  "a  desire  to  tread  a  stage  on  which  he  could  take 
longer  strides,  and  speak  to  a  larger  audience."  Or  to 
say  it  as  Myron  Reed  said  it:  "You  can  not  make  a 
prosperous  farmer  out  of  Robert  Burns.  One  line  of 
power  is  enough  for  one  man." 

In  the  spring  of  1870,  Riley  went  to  work  for 
"a  shoemaker  of  renown,"  affectionately  known 
about  town  as  old  Tom  Snow.  He  had  clerked  in  the 
store  but  a  few  weeks  when  its  proprietor  was  laid  in 
the  grave,  the  store  taken  for  debt,  and  the  clerk  thrown 
out  of  employment.  The  greatest  trial  however  in  that 


SALAD  DAYS  71 

year  of  shadbw,  the  trial  that  most  deeply  affected  his 
future,  was  the  loss  of  his  mother,  who  died  suddenly 
one  Tuesday  morning  in  August.  The  bereavement 
caused  a  complete  change  in  his  life.  It  sent  him  into 
the  world  to  make  his  own  living,  and  in  numerous 
ways  it  was  a  forlorn  road  he  had  to  travel. 

A  few  hours  after  her  death  he  walked  alone 
through  a  cornfield  to  a  favorite  retreat  south  of 
the  railroad,  an  old  clearing,  where  on  a  later 
day  (as  will  be  seen)  he  received  his  message  from 
the  South  Wind  and  the  Sun.  But  on  that  particular 
forenoon  he  looked  straight  up  from  the  tall  iron- 
weeds  into  God's  great  lonesome  sky, — 

"Bowed  with  silence  vast  in  weight 
As  that  which  falls  on  one  who  stands 
For  the  first  time  on  ocean  sands, 
Seeing  and  feeling  all  the  great 
Awe  of  the  waves  as  they  wash  the  lands.". 

"I  was  alone,"  said  he,  "till  as  in  a  vision  I  saw  my 
mother  smiling  back  upon  me  from  the  blue  fields  of 
love — when  lo !  she  was  young  again.  Suddenly  I  had 
the  assurance  that  I  would  meet  her  somewhere  in 
another  world.  I  was  gathering  the  fruit  of  what  had 
been  so  happily  impressed  on  me  in  childhood.  I  had 
seen  that  the  world  is  a  stage.  Now  I  saw  that  the 
universe  is  a  stage.  Another  curtain  had  been  lifted. 
My  mother  was  enraptured  at  the  sight  of  new  scen 
ery.  It  was  the  dream  of  Heaven  with  which  'Johnny 
Appleseed'  had  impressed  my  mother  in  the  Missis- 
sinewa  cabin." 

Forward  from  that  lonely  hour  there  was  a  light 
on  Riley's  path  that  ever  seemed  the  refulgence  of  his 
mother's  smile.  When  the  memory  of  the  vision  had 
been  hallowed  by  length  of  years,  he  left  a  transcript 


72  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

of  it  in  two  delicate  stanzas  he  entitled  "Transfigured." 
Childhood  and  immortal  youth  were  synonymous : 

"A  stately  figure,  rapt  and  awed, 

In  her  new  guise  of  Angelhood, 
Still  lingered,  wistful — knowing  God 
Was  very  good ; 

"Her  thought's  fine  whisper  filled  the  pause, 

And,  listening,  the  Master  smiled, 
And  lo!  the  stately  Angel  was 
A  little  child." 

From  his  cradle  his  mother's  voice  had  ever  been  a 
living  song  of  sympathy.  There  was  a  poetic  charm 
in  her  name — Elizabeth.  Its  cadence  lingered  as  tune 
fully  on  his  lips  as  the  music  of  love  in  his  heart.  Re 
calling  stories  of  her  joy  and  heroism  in  days  of  poverty 
and  suffering,  her  "perseverance  under  all  doubts  and 
dangers,"  he  thought  of  her  as  the  "Little  Nell"  of  the 
frontier — "Little  Nell"  she  was,  with  the  additional 
crown  of  marriage  and  motherhood.  Like  the  heroine 
of  fiction,  she  had  lead  a  wandering  life.  Her  parents 
had  brought  her  through  a  wilderness  of  wild  animals 
and  pioneer  settlements.  From  the  "Old  North  State" 
up  through  the  Blue  Ridge  solitudes  she  had  come, 
through  Cumberland  Gap  and  on  through  the  wilds  of 
Kentucky — a  journey  of  some  seven  hundred  miles  in 
a  one-horse  wagon.  The  son  dearly  loved  the  tradition 
of  his  mother's  girlhood  days  in  Randolph  County. 
He  saw  her  strolling  away  from  her  cabin  home 
to  new  scenery  in  the  forest.  From  her  he  had 
inherited  the  spirit  of  investigation.  As  her  chief 
delight  was  to  trace  tributaries  and  rivulets  to 
their  sources,  so  was  he  joyous  when  tracing 
threads  of  thought  and  action  back  to  their  foun- 


SALAD  DAYS  73 

tainheads.  Her  maidenhood  on  the  Mississinewa 
was  to  him  an  ideal  life.  The  stream  was  for  her  the 
"Beautiful  Kiver"  that  rose  somewhere  in  the  Great 
Buckeye  Woods  and  ran  merrily  by  her  door.  As  she 
stood  there  in  the  light  of  morning  skies,  she  was  his 
dream  of  the  "Golden  Girl,"  the  idyllic  Muse  that  came 
to  accompany  him  the  year  he  caught  the  vision  of  his 
mission. 

To  have  been  loved,  it  has  been  finely  said,  is  better 
than  to  have  built  the  Parthenon.  Elizabeth  Marine 
Riley  was  loved.  She  was  the  heroine  of  trials  which 
are  not  chronicled  in  earthly  records,  but  in  all  ways 
she  was  upheld  and  sustained  by  the  ties  of  friend 
ship.  She  was  as  hopeful  as  Spring.  She  augured  the 
harvest  of  universal  good.  In  old  Persian  phrase  (to 
repeat  what  her  son  often  repeated) ,  "taking  the  first 
step  with  the  good  thought,  the  second  with  the  good 
word,  and  the  third  with  the  good  deed,  she  entered 
Paradise." 

A  turn  in  the  road  had  really  come.  The  invisible 
Messenger  had  passed,  the  mother  had  gone  to  a  land 
where  there  are  no  tears,  and  home  ties  had  been 
broken.  He  was  no  longer  a  schoolboy  but  J.  W. — » 
sometimes  James  W.  Riley.  Fate  had  denied  him  a 
clerkship  in  a  store,  and  he  had  been,  to  quote  a  school 
mate,  "the  most  celebrated  failure  in  arithmetic  in 
the  county."  Old  folks  prophesied  life  failure.  "They 
did  not  think  I  would  amount  to  much  at  home,"  said 
Riley,  recalling  the  days.  "Being  a  lawyer  my  father 
believed  in  facts.  He  had  little  use  for  a  boy  who  could 
not  learn  arithmetic.  There  were  others  of  the  same 
opinion.  My  schoolmates  had  an  aptitude  for  figures 
and  stood  well  in  their  classes.  The  result  was  half 
the  town  pitied  me.  Again  and  again  I  was  told  I 


74  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

would  have  to  be  supported  by  the  family.  Something 
had  to  be  done.  I  knew  it — and  my  father  knew  it. 
So  I  went  over  to  Rushville  to  sell  Bibles."  The  father 
was  doubtful  of  the  issue,  as  is  shown  in  the  following 
letter: 

Greenfield,  Indiana, 

December  19,  1870. 
My  Dear  Boy: 

I  have  been  patiently  waiting  for  a  letter  from  you 
and  have  received  none.  Scarcely  an  hour  passes  with 
out  my  thinking  of  you  and  wondering  how  you  are 
getting  along?  how  you  are  doing?  and  how  you  are 
managing?  I  have  had  much  more  experience  in  the 
world  than  you.  It  is  all  important  that  you  associate 
with  none  but  those  of  good  character,  that  you  be 
self-reliant  and  aim  high,  and  suffer  no  stain  to  at 
tach  to  your  conduct.  I  would  like  to  counsel  and  ad 
vise  with  you.  Please  write  me  fully  and  confidently, 
and  all  reasonable  assistance  in  my  power  I  will  render. 
We  are  all  well,  and  have  been  anxiously  looking  and 
waiting  for  you  to  come  home.  Somehow  I  don't  think 
your  book  business  is  paying  but  I  may  be  mistaken. 
I  hope  I  am,  and  would  like  to  know  more  about  it, 
and  more  about  the  man  who  is  with  you.  Don't  fail 
to  write  immediately.  I  will  be  absent  until  Wednes 
day  or  Thursday  in  Hamilton  County,  defending  two 
men  charged  with  murder. 

With  a  Father's  deep  solicitude  for  you, 
I  am  very  truly  and  affectionately, 

R.  A.  RILEY. 

"It  turned  out,"  said  Riley,  "that  citizens  of  Rush 
ville  had  all  the  Bibles  they  needed ;  they  had  not  time 
to  read  those  they  had."  So  in  the  first  weeks  of  1871 
he  found  himself  with  a  Number  5  paint  brush  and  a 
bucketful  of  paint  under  the  eaves  painting  a  house  in 
Greenfield.  "I  was  not  quite  so  melancholy  as  Tom 
Sawyer,"  said  he,  "but  the  walls  of  that  house  did  have 


SALAD  DAYS  75 

a  far-reaching  look  like  a  continent,  just  as  the  long, 
unwhitewashed  fence  looked  to  Tom." 

Riley  had  learned  house-painting  on  hot  summer 
days  a  year  or  so  before.  "Painting  frame  houses  was 
my  vacation,"  said  he.  Having  become  an  efficient 
house-painter,  he  and  two  associates  contracted  with 
the  trustees  to  paint  the  new  Public  School  building. 
'The  dome,"  said  Riley,  "looked  two  hundred  feet  high. 
Being  the  most  nimble,  I  had  to  paint  it.  We  attached 
a  rope  to  the  pinnacle  and  with  brush  and  bucket  I 
scaled  it  over  the  cornice.  It  was  perilous,  suspended 
there  between  heaven  and  earth.  I  did  not  stop  then 
to  write  a  couplet.  I  did  not  revel  in  the  Rollo  Books." 
A  friend  wrote  him  that  his  climbing  the  paint  ladder 
was  "typical  of  the  coming  man  on  the  ladder  of  fame. 
There  is  not  much  danger,"  said  the  friend,  gently  re 
ferring  to  his  habits,  "while  standing  on  the  lower 
round,  but  beware  when  your  feet  stand  on  the  rounds 
near  the  top.  I  am  anxious  to  see  the  day  when  the 
world  will  appreciate  you  for  what  you  are  worth, 
but  I  do  not  want  you  to  fly  the  track.  Put  on  plenty 
of  sand,  and  reverse  on  the  down  grade." 

His  house-painting  was  the  attainment  of  one  or 
two  summer  vacations.  The  sign-painting  trade  re 
quired  more  time.  Symptoms  of  his  ability  in  that  line 
were  seen  in  his  school-days.  Very  early  he  developed  a 
"knack  for  drawing."  School  books,  scraps  of  paper 
and  old  envelopes  bore  evidence  of  his  gift.  Cunning 
borders  and  clever  tail-pieces  were  found  on  almost 
every  page.  He  made  sketches  with  a  goose-quill  pen. 
With  no  outside  aid,  he  surpassed  the  efforts  of  many 
students  under  the  guidance  of  masters.  He  aspired 
to  be  a  portrait  painter,  "improvised  a  studio,"  and  at 
the  age  of  fourteen  drew  a  creditable  sketch  of  his 


76  JAMES  WHITCOMB  EILEY 

father  sitting  by  the  fireside.  Standing  before  a  mir 
ror  he  made  a  crayon  drawing  of  himself.  His  sister 
Elva  remembered  crayons  of  George  and  Martha  Wash 
ington,  and  with  what  pride  he  pointed  to  them  on  his 
"studio"  wall. 

Various  suggestions  for  drawings  came  from 
Montieth's  Geography.  One  illustration  in  particular 
he  remembered — "Daniel  Boone  with  the  melan 
choly  hounds  and  a  deceased  deer  at  his  feet."  Another 
was  the  picture  of  the  Hoosier  State  seal.  What  the 
lad  did  with  that  drawing  was  afterward  worked  up 
for  amusement  into  a  prose  sketch.  The  pioneer  in  the 
picture,  a  stalwart  man  in  shirt-sleeves,  was  hacking 
away  at  a  tree  without  deigning  to  notice  the  stam 
peding  buffalo.  Riley  took  his  "graphic  pen  and 
mounted  each  plunging  buffalo  with  a  daring  rider 
holding  a  slack  bridle-rein  in  one  hand,  and  with  the 
other  swinging  a  plug  hat  in  the  most  exultant  and 
defiant  manner." 

Riley  learned  sign-painting  within  a  year  under  the 
rambling  instruction  of  a  veteran  of  the  trade.  His 
father  paid  the  tuition  in  the  hope  that  it  would 
develop  into  something  better  for  the  son,  since  he 
was  making  such  hopeless  progress  in  the  schoolroom. 
To  some  it  seemed  a  step  down  the  ladder  from  the 
Academy  to  a  paintshop.  The  shop,  a  ramshackle 
establishment  near  the  railroad,  was  a  group  of  old 
granaries,  with  their  walls  full  of  knot-holes.  There 
was  an  adjoining  apartment  filled  with  a  family  of 
noisy  negro  children  whose  father,  as  Riley  phrased 
it,  "was  the  most  competent  stutterer  in  the 
county."  Riley's  course  in  painting  included  graining, 
penciling  and  a  few  short  lessons  in  landscape.  He 
did  not  "block  out"  as  did  the  other  beginners.  He 


SALAD  DAYS  77 

simply  did  the  work  offhand  with  an  artistic  efficiency 
peculiar  and  pleasing  to  himself.  He  measured  with 
the  eye,  but  he  was  as  painstaking  and  exacting  as  he 
was  afterward  in  the  preparation  of  manuscripts. 
When  lettering  he  often  made  capitals  from  graceful 
patterns  which  he  himself  had  designed. 

That  he  was  soon  beyond  the  aid  of  his  instructor 
was  proved  by  a  picture  of  a  greyhound  on  a  sign 
which  he  painted  that  "was  so  perfect,  children  going 
by  were  afraid  of  the  dog."  Riley's  native  town  began 
to  take  notice  of  him.  His  drawings  and  his  accidental 
jingles  were  quoted  by  friends  as  "proofs  of  his 
inspiration,"  though  the  little  circle  of  skeptics  around 
him  still  prophesied  failure.  He  bestowed  on  them,  it 
is  said,  something  more  than  the  contempt  of  silence, 
and  resolved  to  prove  to  his  native  town  that  it  had 
wronged  a  man  who  deserved  to  succeed. 

Having  learned  his  trade,  and  having  quit  school, 
Bible-selling,  and  house-painting,  Riley  established  him 
self  in  a  shop  of  his  own.  Customers  would  find  him 
"at  the  head  of  the  stairs,  over  the  drug  store."  He 
advertised  on  a  large  card  with  pictorial  designs, 
which  he  was  permitted  to  hang  in  the  post-office.  This 
caught  the  attention  of  the  county  papers.  "Our 
young  friend,  J.  W.  Riley,"  said  the  Democrat, 
"has  a  sign  for  himself  that  is  a  credit  to  him." 
"That  sign  in  the  post-office,"  said  the  Com- 
mercial,  "is  attracting  considerable  attention  and 
much  merriment."  A  feature  of  the  sign  was 
a  silhouetted  figure,  a  lad  standing  with  two 
fingers  upraised  and  outspread — the  signal  among  the 
boys  that  there  was  a  good  time  coming  at  the  Old 
Swimmin'  Hole.  "While  waiting  for  the  turn  of  for 
tune,"  said  Riley,  "I  covered  all  the  barns  and  fences 


78  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

with  advertisements.  All  the  while  I  was  nibbling  at 
the  rhyme-maker's  trade,  and  this  was  a  source  of  irri 
tation  to  my  father.  The  outlook  was  not  encouraging. 
He  thought  I  should  devote  my  time  exclusively  to  paint 
ing."  That  the  painter  made  some  money  by  the  way 
is  shown  by  memoranda  and  receipts.  These  also  show 
a  demand  for  him  away  from  home. 

MEMORANDA 

Go  to  Palestine  to-morrow  at  twelve  o'clock  to  letter 
wagon  for  L.  H.  Clayton.  Terms  $2.50  and  expenses. 

Greenfield,  Indiana. 
For  painting  signs  for  Poulson  &  Jones,  as  follows : 

3  doors $5.00 

1  gilt  sign,  2  sides $5.00 

1  gilt  sign,  1  side $2.50 

1  window  blind $2.00 

Total $14.50 

Received  payment, 

J.  W.  Riley. 

"It  was  holding  the  wolf  by  the  ears,"  said  he,  refer 
ring  to  "the  time  that  tried  his  soles."  "Like  Jason, 
I  had  but  one  sandal  to  my  foot."  He  went  on  to  tell 
how  he  was  pursued  by  creditors,  but  there  was  more 
humor  than  insolvency  in  what  he  said.  "I  kept  a 
lookout  at  every  alley  and  corner.  If  any  one  looked  at 
me  I  fled  like  quicksilver.  I  shifted  from  place  to  place, 
like  George  Morland.  I  was  acquainted  with  every 
spot  of  secrecy  in  Center  Township." 

As  he  drew  a  worn  memorandum  book  from  his 
pocket,  a  chum  asked,  "Is  that  to  remind  you  of  a  sign 
to  paint  in  Fountaintown  ?"  "Not  exactly,"  replied 
Riley,  "I  enter  in  this  book  the  names  of  creditors 


SALAD  DAYS  79 

whose  door  I  can  not  pass  any  more.  This  dinner  we 
have  enjoyed  on  credit  to-day  at  the  Guymon  House 
closes  Main  Street.  I  bought  a  pair  of  pumps  on  State 
Street  last  week  which  forbids  more  buying  in  that 
quarter.  There  is  but  one  avenue  open — South  Street 
— and  I  shall  have  to  stop  that  to-night  with  a  bag  of 
meal.  The  roads  are  closing  in  all  directions  and  un 
less  my  uncle  in  the  Lone  Star  State  sends  me  a  remit 
tance  soon,  I  shall  have  to  go  round  by  Tailholt  to  get 
home." 

It  has  been  said  that  "no  background  of  poverty  or 
early  hardships  can  be  provided  for  this  poet  of  the 
people."  But  this  assertion  is  not  supported  by  the 
facts.  "We  were  poor,"  said  Riley,  referring  to  the  loss 
of  his  father's  law  practice  after  the  Civil  War,  "so 
poor  we  had  to  move  into  a  cheerless  house  in  the  edge 
of  a  cornfield,  our  homestead  having  been  lost  in  a 
luckless  trade  for  land  on  the  prairies."  He  went  on  in 
a  jocular  way  to  recount  his  experience  with  old-time 
house  parties,  how  he  had  folded  his  overcoat  on  his 
arm  to  hide  the  rents  in  the  lining,  and  how  he  had 
worn  his  Derby  hat  wrong  side  foremost  to  make  less 
conspicuous  a  hole  in  the  brim. 

In  explanation  of  property  losses  it  is  due  the  father 
to  add  that  he  suffered  injuries  for  life  from  the  ex 
plosion  of  a  shell  at  the  battle  of  Rich  Mountain.  The 
consequent  loss  of  power  was  followed  by  the  loss  of 
prestige  and  property.  He  had  what  Goethe's  father 
had,  "a  bent  for  puttering,"  but  this  could  not  be  said 
of  him  before  his  injury  on  the  battle-field. 

The  poverty  of  those  days  must  not  be  construed  into 
a  state  of  indigence.  As  Riley  observed  on  another 
occasion,  "We  were  poor  but  not  pitifully  poor.  When 
I  was  a  boy  there  were  no  very  rich  nor  very  poor.  We 


80  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

drive  through  the  country  in  a  carriage.  A  tousled, 
barefooted,  bareheaded  boy  in  overalls  steps  into  the 
dog  fennel  at  the  side  of  the  road  to  let  us  pass,  and 
some  one  remarks,  'Poor  child !'  Poor?  he  is  rich;  every 
day  three  meals  of  potatoes  and  corn  bread  and  milk — 
freedom,  fresh  air,  miles  of  landscape,  blackberries  and 
watermelons  in  season  and  walnuts  for  Christmas.  One 
summer  while  my  father  was  gone  to  war,  we  were  so 
poor  my  mother  had  to  pin  on  my  clothing.  After  a 
splash  in  the  Old  Swimmin'  Hole,  it  took  the  help  of 
two  boys  to  pin  it  on.  Yet  I  was  rich.  The  lads  of 
to-day  have  no  such  shady  bower  for  splashing  as  I 
had.  Lincoln  had  a  rich  boyhood.  To  be  born  in  a 
log  cabin  is  to  be  rich.  I  came  within  an  ace  of  missing 
it.  Had  Lincoln  been  born  amid  a  wilderness  of  brick 
and  lath  and  nails  and  mortar,  he  never  would  have 
become  the  Savior  of  his  Country.  I  once  heard  a 
speaker  say  of  the  cabin  in  Kentucky  that  it  is  now 
lifted  and  set  on  one  of  the  shining  summits  of  the 
world — and  so  it  is.  Lincoln  was  a  rich  man.  He  lived 
in  the  American  woods.  They  said  it  was  a  mental 
wilderness.  It  was  a  mental  university.  How  rich  he 
was  with  that  handful  of  seven  books  by  the  cabin  fire. 
What  value  he  attached  to  his  visit  to  this  world,  every 
day  a  day  of  discovery,  a  new  survey  of  facts  and  prin 
ciples,  every  day  reaching  out  like  the  wide-spreading 
trees  around  him  for  soil  and  water.  I  would  rather 
see  what  he  saw  and  loved  than  see  the  sky-line  of  a 
great  city." 

Riley  always  made  it  clear  that  he  would  rather  have 
the  Lincoln  experience  than  suffer  the  blight  of  pros 
perity.  Once  after  hearing  David  Swing  he  contem 
plated  a  lecture  on  "The  Sunny  Side  of  Poverty."  We 
all  have  known,  Swing  had  said,  some  poor  girl  to 


SALAD  DAYS  81 

bend  over  her  sewing  and  sing  far  into  the  night,  not 
because  sewing  and  poverty  are  sweet,  but  because  the 
cares  and  sorrows  of  life  had  been  baptized  in  the 
great  flowing  river  of  love.  "My  mother-,"  said  Riley, 
"was  baptized  in  that  river.  That  baptism  revealed 
the  heroic  in  her — 

Only  those  are  crowned  and  sainted 
Who  with  grief  have  been  acquainted. 

In  days  of  prosperity  she  was  beautiful.  She  was 
heroic  and  saintly  during  the  war  and  after,  in  the 
days  of  adversity." 

"The  poet  of  the  people  should  wear  overalls,"  Riley 
remarked  to  a  wealthy  friend,  while  winning  his  way 
to  distinction.  The  remark  was  not  made  in  jest. 
It  was  no  vain  pretense  of  sympathy  for  those  in 
straightened  circumstance.  He  had  met  the  require 
ments.  He  was  entitled  to  his  prosperity.  He  had 
not  capitalized  his  hardships.  He  had  not  bewailed 
his  fate.  He  had  accepted  what  the  wheel  of  fortune 
brought  him,  not  always  contentedly,  but  never  in  a 
vindictive  spirit.  He  observed  with  much  glee 
that  it  was  the  loss  of  a  sandal  that  sent  Jason  on 
the  quest  for  the  Golden  Fleece.  Thus  by  joking  about 
his  lot,  the  sign-painter  endeared  himself  to  his  friends 
and  ultimately  to  the  American  people.  "Poverty,"  he 
affirmed,  "is  the  north  wind  that  lashes  men  like  Mark 
Twain  and  Lincoln  into  Vikings — women  like  May  Al- 
cott,  it  makes  a  queen  of  the  earth.  She  was  enshrined 
in  the  heart  of  mankind,  not  because  she  had  to  do 
second  work  including  washing  at  two  dollars  a  week — 
not  that.  Her  history  is  inspiring  because  she  rose 
above  two  dollars  a  week.  She  smiled  at  the  thumping 
of  fate.  It  made  her,  as  she  herself  said,  a  sweet,  ripe 
old  pippin  before  she  died." 


82  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Though  the  seasons  brought  hard  times  to  Riley,  his 
signs  brought  prosperity  to  others.  Like  the  rustic 
in  As  You  Like  It,  he  was  shepherd  to  other  men,  and 
did  not  shear  the  fleece  he  grazed. 

"Hart  and  Thayer 
Hart  and  Thayer 

All  the  wool 
You  have  to  spare 

Take  it  along 
To  Hart  and  Thayer." 

Thus  ran  the  homely  jingle  on  sign-boards  nailed  up 
on  the  highways  leading  into  town — "the  first  rhyme," 
said  a  thrifty  farmer,  "that  ever  stimulated  sheep 
growing  in  Hancock  County."  It  proved  to  be 
such  a  hit  and  brought  so  much  business  to  the 
firm  that  other  signs  appeared  on  roads  farther 
away  from  the  center  of  trade.  "Shilling  poetry," 
the  farmers  called  it,  and  well  they  might,  for  it 
raised  the  price  of  wool.  Rhyme-spinning  was 
vying  with  the  song  of  the  loom.  Greenfield  drew 
trade  from  neighboring  counties  to  the  extent  that  the 
wool  industry  assumed  the  appearance  of  "smuggling," 
by  which  was  meant  the  sale  of  wool  in  Greenfield  that, 
by  the  unwritten  laws  of  trade,  belonged  to  merchants 
in  Newcastle  and  Shelbyville.  Loss  to  those  towns 
seemed  to  require  legislation,  or  the  attention  of  a  mon 
arch  like  Edward  III  to  prohibit  the  exportation  of  wool 
"under  pain  of  life  and  limb."  "Wool  was  not  a  drug 
on  the  market,"  a  merchant  humorously  remarked. 
"Flemish  weavers  began  to  look  our  way.  Business 
vied  with  trade  from  Argentina  and  the  Falkland 
Isles." 

The  sign-painter,  it  may  be  observed  parenthetically, 
was  beginning  the  search  for  a  Golden  Fleece,  but  he 


SALAD  DAYS  83 

had  not  dreamed  of  his  efforts  affecting  trade  in  pure 
bred  merinos  and  Silesian  wools.  It  may  also  be  said 
that  his  profession  was  not  wholly  modern,  although 
many  features  of  it  were  peculiar  to  his  time,  several 
originating  with  him.  Nor  was  the  occupation  wholly 
commonplace,  and  certainly  it  was  not  menial,  even 
though  Kiley  "had  but  one  coat  to  his  back,  and  that 
had  frazzled  sleeves  and  patches  on  the  elbows."  Sign 
boards  had  been  painted  by  such  great  artists  as  Ho 
garth,  Wilson  and  Correggio.  A  few  years  before  Riley 
climbed  to  the  roof  of  the  Greenfield  school  building, 
Archibald  Willard,  famous  for  his  painting,  "The 
Spirit  of  '76,"  was  gilding  wheels  and  axletrees  in  a 
carriage  factory  in  Ohio. 

All  in  all,  in  this  transitional  period,  Riley  was  not 
in  bad  company. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS 

HE  WAS  fresh  and  vigorous;  he  was  animated 
with  hope ;  he  was  incited  by  desire ;  he  walked 
swiftly  over  the  valleys  and  saw  the  hills  grad 
ually  rising  before  him." 

This  paragraph  from  an  old  school  Reader  gave  Riley 
elemental  pleasure.  "Just  to  repeat  it,"  said  he,  "gives 
delight  like  the  music  of  warblers  or  the  fragrance  of 
May-apples."  It  was  from  a  lesson  entitled  "A  Pic 
ture  of  Human  Life."  He  approved  the  picture, 
drawing  the  line  only  on  the  counsel  of  the  hermit  who 
discouraged  the  indulgence  of  pleasure.  There  were,  to 
be  sure,  pleasures  that  brought  dissatisfaction  in  the 
wake  of  the  disasters  attending  them ;  but  there  was  a 
universe  of  pleasure  that  did  not  end  in  prostration, 
remorse  and  suffering.  The  hermit  scorned  enjoy 
ment.  He  limited  travelers  to  the  main  road.  They 
were  not  to  forsake  the  common  track,  which  was  the 
dusty,  uneven  way  of  the  plain.  They  were  to  forego 
the  pleasure  derived  from  the  music  of  birds,  the 
sparkle  of  fountains  and  the  murmur  of  water-falls. 
To  mount  a  hill  for  a  fresh  prospect,  or  trace  the  course 
of  a  gentle  river  among  the  trees  was  to  overspread  the 
sky  with  clouds  and  invite  the  tempest. 

Riley  promptly  disregarded  the  hermit's  counsel. 
Poetic  natures  the  world  over,  he  thought,  should  create 
and  discover  scenes  of  happiness.  This  meant  for  the 
discoverers  release  from  custom.  Without  such  release 

84 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      85 

the  light  of  their  lives  was  lost.  To  travel  the  main 
highway  exclusively  as  the  hermit  advised,  was  to 
court  mediocrity.  It  was  to  impoverish  human  re 
sources.  The  main  road  for  the  indifferent,  those  who 
lost  themselves  in  the  crowd;  but  when  a  young  man 
had  in  his  heart  something  that  distinguished  him  from 
the  common  run  of  men,  he  necessarily  had  to  depart 
from  the  beaten  path.  The  very  law  of  his  existence 
meant  a  new  road,  to  travel  onward  along  which  meant 
gardens  of  pleasure.  To  enjoy  these  gardens  was  not, 
in  consequence,  to  lose  the  happiness  of  innocence,  not 
to  forsake  the  paths  of  virtue.  One  could  make  life 
picturesque  without  indulging  evil  passions. 

Thus  it  was,  as  a  young  man  entering  "the  arena  of 
the  firmament,"  that  Riley  made  his  own  picture  of 
human  life.  In  reality  there  were  two  pictures.  As  he 
grew  to  manhood,  these  took  definite  form  and  became 
paramount  in  importance,  the  one  blending  with  the 
other.  He  divided  the  world  into  prose  and  poetry. 
Whenever  what  he  thought  or  did  related  to  the  prosaic 
side  of  existence,  he  was  a  Pilgrim.  From  early  man 
hood  he  desired  to  write  a  narrative  poem  of  consider 
able  length  to  be  entitled  "The  Mayflower  Voyage,"  the 
mission  of  the  poem  being  to  make  it  a  little  clearer 
to  the  readers  that  his  life  was  just  such  a  voyage.  By 
idealizing  incidents  of  courage  and  self-sacrifice  he 
hoped  to  develop  a  dramatic  narrative  that  would  en 
noble  the  perseverance,  refresh  the  faith,  and  stimulate 
the  hope  of  the  people.  Although  he  failed  to  write  the 
poem,  he  did  not  fail  to  experience  the  Pilgrim's  fate, 
"the  fate  of  all  men,"  said  he,  "who  grapple  courag 
eously  with  the  problems  of  human  progress.  All 
citizens  worthy  the  name  make  the  Pilgrim  voy 
age,  and  it  is  a  piece  of  good  fortune  that  they 


86  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

have  to  make  it.  Trial  grows  character.  The  lives 
of  our  statesmen  were  foreshadowed  in  the  stormy 
passage  of  the  Mayflower.  Necessarily  they  were  men 
of  sorrows.  The  Ship  of  State  gave  them  many  sleep 
less  nights.  Now,  paradoxical  as  it  seems,  there  are  in 
the  experience  of  the  poet  as  in  the  lives  of  statesmen, 
days  dark  as  night.  His  bark,  like  the  Ship  of  State,  is 
often  driven  through  perilous  waters.  Like  the  Pil 
grim,  the  poet  is  buffeted  by  billows  within  and  without. 
He  is  destined  to  follow  his  star  in  the  pathless  way 
through  fogs  and  blinding  rain.  It  does  not  strain  the 
truth  to  say  that  he  is  tossed  on  frozen  shores  bleak  and 
drear  as  the  coasts  of  death." 

"Such  is  life,"  said  Riley,  "when  yoked  to  the  prosaic 
side  of  human  existence."  But  there  was  another  pic 
ture  and  with  it  he  was  enraptured.  He  was  a  Pil 
grim,  but  chiefly  he  was  an  Argonaut  in  search  of  a 
Golden  Fleece.  The  glow  of  feeling  in  the  man  in  the 
spring  days  of  his  genius  when  he  found  what  he  called 
"a  wisp  of  the  Fleece,"  and  within  it  the  thread  of  gold 
for  a  poem  (the  climax  in  the  last  stanza  as  all  Riley 
readers  know),  when  he  found  that,  his  rapture  was 
as  heavenly  as  the  divinity  of  youth.  Sometimes  the 
work  of  a  single  night  sparkled  with  jewels,  and  when 
daybreak  came  he  had  the  threads  for  several  poems. 
They  were  the  gifts  of  the  gods.  Lest  he  lose  them,  he 
wrote  the  stanza  immediately,  which  accounts  for  the 
singular  fact  that  he  often  wrote  the  last  stanza  first 
when  building  a  poem. 

His  Argonautic  dream  dates  back  to  boyhood  when 
he  first  began  to  think  of  life  as  a  voyage  of  discovery, 
back  to  the  days  when  Uncle  Mart  and  Almon  Keefer 
held  the  children  captive  with  fairy  stories,  when  little 
"Bud"  lay  on  his  back  in  the  shade  of — 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      87 

"The  red-apple-tree,  with  dreamy  eyes 
And  Argo-fancies  voyaging  the  skies." 

The  particular  book  that  gave  birth  to  the  dream  of  the 
Golden  Fleece  was  Hawthorne's  Tanglewood  Tales, 
which  just  then  was  coming  over  the  Alleghanies  in  its 
first  edition.  "This  enterprise,  you  will  understand," 
Uncle  Mart  read  from  the  Tales,  "was  of  all  others,  the 
most  difficult  and  dangerous  in  the  world.  In  the  first 
place,  it  would  be  necessary  to  make  a  long  voyage 
through  unknown  seas.  There  was  hardly  a  hope,  or  a 
possibility,  that  any  young  man  who  should  undertake 
the  voyage  would  either  succeed  in  obtaining  the  Golden 
Fleece,  or  would  survive  to  return  home  and  tell  of  the 
perils  he  had  run."  In  simple  English,  writing  poetry, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  quest  for  Golden  Fleece  in  other 
fields,  was  one  of  the  most  difficult  things  to  do  under 
the  sun.  The  youthful  Riley  however  saw  not  the  diffi 
culties  attending  the  voyage.  Children  then  as  now 
were  "blessedly  blind"  to  facts  such  as  these.  His  inter 
est  centered  in  the  galley  and  the  heroes  with  helmets 
and  shields  who  were  willing  to  row  him,  if  need  be, 
"to  the  remotest  edge  of  the  world."  Not  the  least 
among  his  heroes  being  Orpheus  the  harper,  who  played 
upon  the  lyre  so  sweetly  that  the  beasts  of  the  fields 
capered  to  the  music.  The  dangers  and  difficulties  were 
reserved  for  the  school  of  experience. 

Tales  of  other  heroes,  the  Argonauts  of  Forty-Nine, 
were  heard  in  those  days.  These  kindled  in  the  Riley 
youth  the  spirit  of  adventure.  His  earliest  recollec 
tions  were  of  the  gold-fever  excitement.  Soon  after 
1849,  the  National  Road  became  a  westward  stream 
of  vagrants.  The  stream  passed  his  childhood  door.  The 
Overland  Route  through  the  South  Pass  to  San  Fran 
cisco  was  advertised  in  Indiana  communities.  Young 


88  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

men  having  packs  and  good  animals  were  asked  to  fall 
into  the  ranks  and  cross  the  continent.  They  could 
reach  gold  in  one  hundred  and  twenty  days.  They 
were  told  the  land  by  the  sundown  sea  was  "the 
finest  new  country  of  which  the  human  race  has  any 
knowledge."  The  lure  of  the  Far  West  was  very  great. 
It  had  drawn  Bret  Harte  to  the  Golden  Gate  at  the  age 
of  seventeen.  A  few  years  later  Mark  Twain  had  gone 
bounding  in  a  stage-coach  over  the  Great  Divide  to 
Nevada.  "It  was  an  assemblage  of  young  men,"  said 
Twain,  referring  to  the  driving  population  of  the  min 
ing  regions — "not  simpering,  dainty  kid-gloved  weak 
lings,  but  stalwart,  muscular,  dauntless  young  braves, 
brimful  of  push  and  energy,  and  royally  endowed  with 
every  attribute  that  goes  to  make  up  a  peerless  and 
magnificent  manhood.  No  women,  no  children,  no  gray 
and  stooping  veterans — none  but  erect,  bright-eyed, 
quick-moving,  strong-handed  young  giants — the  most 
gallant  host  that  ever  trooped  down  the  startled  soli 
tudes  of  an  unpeopled  land." 

When  a  spectacle  like  that  smites  the  vision  of  a 
young  man,  he  is  likely  to  lift  his  moorings  and  follow 
the  adventuring  crowd.  But  the  ways  of  Fortune  do 
not  all  lie  to  westward.  It  turned  out  that  the  Golden 
Fleece  which  Riley  sought  was  not  on  the  hillsides  of 
the  American  Fork,  nor  was  California  to  be  his  "Land 
of  the  Afternoon." 

Soon  after  leaving  Greenfield  to  try  his  fortune  in 
other  Hoosier  towns,  he  chanced  to  hear  Bret  Harte 
lecture  on  "The  Argonauts  of  Forty-Nine."  After 
that  for  several  years  he  was  dominated  by  the  spirit 
of  adventure,  although  it  never  led  him  to  distant 
lands.  The  Hoosier  world  was  large  enough.  The 
humorous  Moral  to  Roughing  It  he  took  seriously: 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      8d 

"//  you  are  of  any  account,  stay  at  home  and  make  your 
way  by  faithful  diligence" 

As  he  looked  out  over  his  native  state,  he  was  filled 
like  Orpheus  with  a  desire  to  sing  of  a  wondrous  world, 
and  how  all  things  spring  from  love.  He  talked 
extravagantly  of  the  Golden  Fleece.  His  heart  was 
aflame  in  'The  Argonaut,"  one  of  his  early  poems,  a 
copy  of  which  he  carried  from  town  to  town  in  his 
pocket  till  it  was  worn  threadbare  and  lost.  He  read 
it  aloud  when  he  could  find  a  friendly  listener.  One 
stanza  was  decidedly  Argonautic: 

"And  mistily  as  through  a  veil, 

I  catch  the  glances  of  a  sea 
Of  sapphire,  dimpled  with  a  gale 
From  Colchis  blowing,  where  the  sail 
Of  Jason's  Argo  beckons  me." 

As  he  bowled  through  the  country,  he  was  "a  Forty- 
Niner — the  blessedest  creature  on  the  earth" — but 
never  when  he  thus  thought  of  himself  was  he  a  Cali 
fornia  gold-seeker.  Always  he  had  in  mind  the  joyous 
year  of  his  birth,  and  how  he  had  started  from  the  box 
cradle  on  his  life  voyage  of  discovery. 

Riley  was  a  Pilgrim  when  hampered  with  the  routine 
and  cares  of  business,  when  struggling  with 
debt,  when  the  day  was  a  series  of  banalities 
and  distractions.  But  he  was  an  Argonaut  from 
the  cradle,  and  that  picture  of  human  life,  like  the 
fairy  interest  in  his  work,  was  always  with  him 
when  he  was  doing  what  Heaven  designed  him  to  do. 
Since  he  was  chiefly  an  Argonaut,  the  reader  is  asked 
to  think  of  him  as  such  in  the  following  chapters — and 
first  to  follow  him  in  his  quest  for  Golden  Fleece  among 
old  books. 

The  records  of  a  Greenfield  Sunday-school  once  in- 


90  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

eluded  a  report  by  J.  W.  Riley,  secretary  pro  tempore. 
He  and  his  companions  had  wandered  into  the  church 
out  of  the  rain.  In  the  absence  of  the  regular  secretary, 
he  was  asked  to  write  the  minutes  and  if  so  inclined  to 
make  some  remarks.  His  report  was  a  rare  departure 
from  custom,  his  language  being  an  alarm  to  the  "an 
cient  worthies,"  the  dismay  of  the  ignorant,  and  a  sur 
prise  to  all.  Never  before  had  those  church  walls 
echoed  a  phraseology  so  verbose  and  unaccountable. 
On  leaving  the  church,  a  wide  awake  member  of  the 
flock  seized  the  secretary  pro  tern,  cordially  by  the 
arm  and  requested  him  to  come  again.  "You  serve 
us,"  said  he,  "and  sleep-worship  in  this  sanctuary  will 
write  over  the  door  of  its  departure  the  days  that  are 
no  more."  It  seems  that  Riley  had  by  design  or  acci 
dent  found  a  collection  of  good  old  English  books. 
Having  browsed  at  will  on  "that  fair  and  wholesome 
pasturage,"  he  was  on  that  Sunday  morning,  as  on 
other  occasions,  eager  to  exercise  his  new  vocabulary. 
It  was  Riley's  fortune  to  love  the  beauty  and  knowl 
edge  he  gathered  from  books  for  their  own  sake. 
Like  most  boys,  he  began  by  reading  light  novels. 
Though  they  were  trashy,  he  gleaned  from  them  more 
or  less  information  and  a  knowledge  of  words. 
Happily,  there  lived  near,  a  wise  mother,  Rhoda  Hough- 
ton  Millikan,  who  had  her  own  method  of  lur 
ing  boys  and  girls  to  good  books.  She  was  not 
alarmed  when  they  began  to  devour  dime  novels.  She 
placed  a  copy  of  The  Sketch  Book  on  the  center  table 
where  her  son  and  the  "Riley  boy"  might  find  it.  "Let 
them  nibble  at  it,"  said  she,  "and  they  will  come  to  the 
good  books  by  and  by."  And  they  did.  After  reading 
The  Sketch  Book,  Riley  called  for  more  and  was  given 
The  Alhambra,  and  Irving's  biography  of  Oliver  Gold- 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      91 

smith.  Thus  he  ascended  the  Catskills  with  Rip  Van 
Winkle,  thus  he  was  lured  to  castles  in  Spain,  and  thus 
did  the  author  of  The  Traveller  kindle  Riley's  passion 
for  wandering,  and  acquaint  him  with  the  pleasures 
and  miseries  of  the  scribbling  tribe. 

It  was  fortunate  for  Riley  that  Mrs.  Millikan  was  a 
friend  of  the  best  literature.  He  had  once  been  her 
pupil.  She  was  a  woman  of  heroic  type,  having  reared 
her  family  of  five  children  after  her  husband 
had  been  lost — with  other  Argonauts — in  the  Cali 
fornia  gold  fields.  In  her  youth  she  had  lived 
near  the  Green  Mountains.  Irving  was  her  patron 
saint.  When  she  said,  "I  love  him  dearly,"  the  boys 
knew  she  did.  After  Riley's  first  poem  had  been 
printed  in  a  local  paper,  she  spoke  to  him  of  his  future, 
recalling  what  she  had  read  in  an  old  prospectus  of 
the  first  edition  of  The  Sketch  Book.  "Irving,"  she 
said,  "did  not  aspire  to  high  honors;  it  was  the  dear 
wish  of  his  heart  to  have  a  secure  and  cherished  though 
humble  corner  in  the  good  opinion  and  kind  feelings  of 
his  countrymen.  This,  James,  was  a  worthy  ambition. 
You  can  have  a  similar  corner  in  the  hearts  of  your 
countrymen." 

To  Mrs.  Millikan  (and  a  London  shoemaker,  as  the 
reader  will  see  elsewhere)  is  due  the  credit  for  opening 
to  Riley  the  door  to  good  literature.  She  was  the  first 
of  the  Greenfield  prophets,  the  first  to  see  in  "the 
strange  young  man"  the  possibilities  of  authorship,  and 
it  was  her  happy  fortune  to  see  him  rise  to  the  summit 
of  his  fame. 

About  the  middle  of  the  last  century  a  New  Har 
mony  philanthropist  established  in  Greenfield  the 
McClure  Township  Library,  a  collection  of  three  hun 
dred  volumes,  including  a  series  on  Success  in  Life,  the 


92  JAMES  WHITCOMB  PJLEY 

Queens  of  England,  Macaulay's  England,  the  Works  of 
Washington  Irving,  the  Rollo  Books,  Cooper's  Novels, 
Prescott's  Histories,  and  a  full  line  of  the  poets.  The 
Library  had  a  precarious  existence.  From  its  first 
home  in  the  county  Court  House,  it  drifted  successively 
into  the  schoolhouse,  a  boot  and  shoe  store,  a  grocery 
store,  until  finally  it  was  scattered  among  fami 
lies  of  the  town.  But  wherever  its  home,  it  was 
a  Mecca  for  young  Riley.  A  few  histories  he  read, 
but  with  little  interest.  His  taste  ran  to  fiction 
and  poetry.  He  read  Weem's  Life  of  Washington, 
which  in  spite  of  the  fables,  he  said,  "is  a  better 
book  than  the  later  lives  with  the  fable  left  out. 
Lincoln  grew  up  with  that  book.  It  is  more  nutritious 
than  the  dull  chronicle  of  juiceless  facts." 

It  may  be  observed  in  passing  that  Riley  did  not  limit 
truth  to  fact.  He  liked  immensely  what  Thomas 
Brackett  Reed  said  about  it.  "Why,"  asked  Reed,  "are 
stories  of  great  men  invented?  Because  the  truth  is 
deeper  than  the  fact."  "Truth,"  said  Riley,  "is  a  lim 
itless  realm ;  it  is  universal ;  it  lies  back,  around,  above 
and  below  our  feeble  expression  of  it  and  the  expression 
great  men  give  it.  A  thing  need  not  necessarily  hap- 
•pen  in  order  to  be  a  fact.  If  it  is  told  exactly  the  way 
it  would  happen  if  it  did  happen,  it  is  as  absolutely  true 
as  if  it  had  already  happened.  We  are  told  that  there 
was  no  such  Washington  as  we  fable — and  it  is  true. 
In  other  words  we  have  made  and  are  still  making  our 
Washington.  The  Washington  the  people  love  is  not 
solely  the  Washington  of  history,  but  the  larger  Wash 
ington,  the  cumulative  dream  of  the  National  Mind." 

In  the  Township  Library  Riley  also  found  the  Life  of 
Daniel  Boone,  the  Swiss  Family  Robinson,  Don  Quixote, 
Robin  Hood,  Robinson  Crusoe,  and  what  was  to  him 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      93 

dearest  of  all,  the  Arabian  Nights.  "Its  author  was  no 
pessimist,"  he  remarked  in  after  years,  "although  far 
away  in  the  Persian  desert.  He  was  the  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  of  his  time;  he  fed  the  hungry,  put  a  coat 
on  the  world's  back,  built  a  warm  fire  for  its  comfort 
and  bade  it  be  of  good  cheer.  I  can  never  efface  from 
memory  the  scenes  of  that  book.  They  have  been  theme 
and  inspiration  to  me.  To  this  day  when  I  sniff  coal- 
oil,  it  is  sweet  as  violets,  for  I  think  of  Aladdin  and 
the  Wonderful  Lamp.  I  see  the  huge  iron  door  at  my 
feet.  It  is  raised  for  me;  I  descend  the  narrow  steps 
and  pass  through  the  caves  of  riches  and  find  jewels 
on  the  trees." 

-  But  the  leaven  from  the  Library,  the  most  generative 
and  far-reaching  in  its  effect  was  The  Lives  of  Eminent 
British  Painters  and  Sculptors,  five  leather-bound  vol 
umes  with  a  long  title,  which,  as  Bill  Nye  might  remark, 
was  simplified  for  talking  purposes.  "Where's  Riley?" 
some  one  asked.  "Oh,"  answered  an  old-timer,  "he's 
up  there  readin'  them  British  Books."  Thus  the  vol 
umes  were  designated,  and  affectionately,  too,  when  it 
was  known  how  dearly  the  young  Argonaut  loved  them. 
They  were 

"The  pleasant  books,  that  silently  among 

The  household  treasures,  took  familiar  places, 
And  were  to  him  as  if  a  living  tongue 

Spake  from  the  printed  leaves  or  pictured  faces." 

When  the  remnant  of  the  old  Library  was  scattered 
among  the  Greenfield  patrons,  by  common  consent  the 
"British  Books"  became  Riley's  property,  and  thus  it 
was  that  he  read  them  again  and  again.  Almost  all  that 
he  accomplished  in  those  years  of  growing  manhood 
was  directly  or  indirectly  traceable  to  the  influence  of 
those  books,  and  even  after  his  fame  was  assured,  still 


94  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

those  household  treasures  spoke  to  him  from  their 
printed  pages.  In  them  he  found  excuses  for  his  con 
ceits  and  eccentricities.  His  interest  in  grotesque  com 
binations,  his  sympathy  for  illiterate  people,  his  love  of 
seclusion,  his  scorn  of  extravagance,  his  freedom  from 
the  shackles  of  imitation,  his  determination  to  reach 
the  goal  on  an  individual  road — all  had  a  parallel  in  the 
lives  of  those  British  artists. 

"Fair  Britannia/'  a  waggish  rhymer  once  wrote, 

"Flung  to  her  right  and  her  left, 

Funny  people  with  wings, 
Among  elephants,  Roundheads, 
And  Cataba  kings" ; 

but  the  funniest,  the  oddest,  the  most  whimsical  of  all, 
the  wag  averred,  were  her  children  of  genius  known  as 
painters  and  sculptors.  Riley  agreed  with  the  wag.  As 
he  saw  it,  the  artists  touched  life  at  almost  every  con 
ceivable  point.  "They  were  erratic  men,  hot-tem 
pered,"  said  he ;  "they  were  headstrong  and  presumptu 
ous,  they  manifested  early  proofs  of  inspiration,  they 
were  divinely  interesting,  they  were  good,  they  were 
bad,  they  were  weak,  they  were  strong,  wise,  foolish — 
so  are  men  of  genius  in  all  times." 

In  the  "British  Books"  Riley  found  Sir  Thomas  Law 
rence,  who  taught  that  a  man  should  be  on  good  terms 
with  himself,  the  prudent  artist  who  veiled  his  pros 
perity  that  he  might  have  the  applause  of  his  friends. 

There  was  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds,  who  held  that 
drudgery  lay  on  the  road  to  genius,  the  painter 
who  drew  excellence  from  innumerable  sources, 
paid  attention  to  all  opinions,  and  obtained  valuable 
hints  from  the  rudest  minds.  And  Cosway,  who 
formed  good  resolutions  by  day  and  broke  them  when 
the  lamps  were  lighted;  and  Northcote,  who  had  no 


THE  POET'S  FATHER,   CAPTAIN   REUBEN   A.   RILEY 


OLD  SHOE-SHOP 

Wherein    the  y.mth    Ir.-inu-il    ),,    i(,vc    I>i.-U«Mis 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      95 

first  out-flashings  of  genius,  but  grew  slowly  up  into 
eminence  year  by  year — the  artist  who  all  his  life  was 
afflicted  with  "false  spelling" — the  youth  whose  interest 
in  Jack  the  Giant  Killer  never  diminished — the  man 
who  could  never  open  the  book  without  his  eyes  filling 
with  tears. 

There  was  Gainsborough,  the  son  of  the  cloth- worker, 
the  "father  of  modern  landscape,"  and  Mortimer, 
frequenting  sequestered  places  on  the  seacoast 
amid  smugglers.  And  Copley,  who  refused  to  offer 
up  his  time  and  money  on  the  altar  of  that  expen 
sive  idol,  a  wife ;  and  John  Flaxman,  the  little  sculptor, 
who  showed  that  wedlock  is  for  an  artist's  good  rather 
than  his  harm. 

There  was  William  Hogarth,  who  taught  that  the 
study  of  nature  is  the  short  and  safe  way  to  knowledge 
— Hogarth,  the  painter  of  the  Distressed  Poet,  an  artist 
famed  for  his  humorous  insight,  his  power  of  story 
telling,  a  genius  of  the  first  order,  who  proved  that 
entertainment  and  information  are  not  all  that  is 
required  of  genius,  that  the  public  wish  to  be  elevated 
by  contemplating  what  is  noble,  warmed  by  the  pres 
ence  of  the  heroic,  and  charmed  and  made  happy  by 
the  sight  of  purity  and  loveliness. 

So  the  list  continued.  There  were  Harlow,  Romney, 
Bird,  and  Opie — and  West,  whose  fame,  though  great, 
was  not  purchased  by  trials,  and  hence  was  not  endur 
ing.  There  were  Bonnington  and  Blake  and  Barry — 
all  in  all,  a  goodly  company  for  a  young  man  in  search 
of  a  Golden  Fleece.  The  books  were  stories  of  good  old 
English  pluck  and  heroism,  full  of  folly,  of  heart- 
sorrow,  of  obstacles  surmounted,  of  rectitude  and  re 
nown. 

The  poet's  friend,  Myron  Reed,  was  always  able  to 


96  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

see  primary  significance  in  obscure  incidents  that  had 
been  cast  aside  by  the  historians  and  biographers. 
"Abraham  Lincoln,"  said  he,  "had  some  excellent  com 
pany  at  New  Salem — a  village  loafer,  a  dry-goods  box 
whittler,  and  an  expert  black  bass  fisherman,  who  knew 
the  best  books  on  earth.  There  is  at  least  one  such  man 
in  every  village.  Whitcomb  Riley  had  such  a  man. 
They  do  not  make  or  wreck  railroads,  but  they  help  boys 
to  know  what  to  read  and  what  not  to  read.  One  of 
them  is  a  small  Socrates  in  a  small  town." 

The  Greenfield  Socrates  was  a  jolly  Englishman,  old 
Tom  Snow,  "the  first  man  of  letters,"  said  Riley,  "the 
town  ever  knew" — a  rare  old  shoemaker  who  knew 
what  elders  often  do  not  know,  that  it  is  not  wise  for 
"October  to  be  always  preaching  at  June."  Riley 
traced  his  literary  lineage  back  to  the  Englishman's 
ancestry  in  London.  Tom  Snow  was  Riley's  Old  Man 
with  a  chronic  supply  of  family  troubles,  who,  despite 
them,  never  grew  old,  never  became  "stale,  juiceless, 
or  unpalatable."  His  was  the  roguish  face  with  smiles 
hidden  behind  a  solemn  masquerade, 

"While  his  eyes  were  wet  as  dry 
Reading  novels  on  the  sly." 

He  was  the  oracle  enshrined  in  the  affections  of  the 
children,  the  sponsor  for  good  in  everything,  who  kin 
dled  the  smiles  of  youth — and  the  smile  of  a  poet;  the 
hale  old  heart  that  brimmed  and  overran 

"With  the  strange  enchanted  sights, 
And  the  splendors  and  delights 
Of  the  old  Arabian  Nights." 

He  was  the  cobbler  of  lasting  fame,  who  "seeketh  soles 
to  save,"  the  jovial  shoemaker  who  was  hailed 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      97 

"For  all  his  goodly  deeds — 
Yea,  bless  him  free  for  booting  thee — 
The  first  of  all  thy  needs." 

"In  a  little  side-show  of  existence,"  said  Riley  at  a 
banquet,  "Tom  Snow  was  the  old  man  who  was  always 
worth  the  full  price  of  admission."  He  had  been  a 
member  of  London  literary  clubs  and  had,  for  those 
days,  a  vast  knowledge  of  English  authors.  He  was  a 
superior  reader,  having  been  employed  for  thirteen 
years  to  read  to  "a  flock  of  English  shoemakers,"  his 
chief  duty  being  to  explain  the  text  while  books  were 
discussed.  His  experience  on  coming  to  America  was 
similar  to  that  of  Martin  Chuzzlewitt.  He  was  the 
unfortunate  owner  of  a  spongy  tract  of  swamp-land 
near  Greenfield.  "Standing  in  the  middle  of  it,"  said 
Riley,  '"he  could  wobble  and  shake  the  whole  farm,  and 
I  was  always  glad  that  he  could ;  nature  never  made  him 
for  an  existence  of  trials  and  privations  like  that." 
Finding  that  nothing  but  calamus  would  grow  on  the 
land,  the  Englishman  opened  a  shoe-shop  in  Greenfield 
and  later  established  himself  in  a  bookstore,  gathering 
under  his  roof  the  driftwood  of  the  Township  Library, 
which  had  been  first  secured  through  his  efforts. 

Rain  or  shine,  hot  or  cold,  the  Shoe-Shop  was  head 
quarters  for  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  village  life,  par 
ticularly  for  young  fellows  inclined  to  reading.  The 
discussion  of  books  continued  as  in  London.  Some 
times  the  lads  came  together  to  loaf  and  chatter  over 
scraps  of  town  fiction  or  history;  at  other  times  for 
games.  It  was  not  unusual  to  see  the  Argonaut 
humped  up  with  an  antagonist  in  the  corner  over  a 
checkerboard,  marching  his  platoon  of  wooden  war 
riors  to  and  fro,  and  at  intervals  crooning  the  silence 
with  a  "little  wind-through-the-keyhole-whistle,  while 


98  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

looking  for  a  place  where  he  could  swap  one  man  for 
two." 

The  youthful  Riley's  affection  for  his  old  English 
guide  and  instructor  deserves  to  become  as  proverbial 
as  the  love  of  Telemachus  for  the  faithful  Mentor. 
Tom  Snow  was  the  children's  Peter  Pindar, — and  in 
those  days  boys  and  girls  were  children  till  they  were 
twenty.  Hogarth  would  have  been  charmed  at  the  sight 
of  the  modern  Mentor  telling  the  Riley  boy  the  story 
of  Gog  and  Magog,  the  last  two  of  a  race  of  giants 
who  were  brought  to  London  and  chained  to  the  king's 
palace,  how  the  king  made  them  serve  as  porters,  how 
their  effigies  stood  in  front  of  Guildhall,  and  how  when 
the  clock  on  St.  Paul's  struck  twelve  they  descended 
from  their  pedestals  to  go  into  the  Hall  for  dinner,  and 
how  they  were  destroyed  in  the  Great  Fire.  "That 
story,"  said  Riley,  "embellished  by  his  quaint  varia 
tions,  gave  the  Old  Man  a  parquet  seat  in  my  affec 
tions."  And  the  Shoe-Shop,  too,  was  enshrined  in  his 
love.  That  was  a  rare  picture  of  the  dear  Long  Ago, 
when  the  Old  Man  read  the  story  of  Little  Nell,  when  he 

.    .    .     "arose  and  from  his  pack's  scant  treasure 

A  hoarded  volume  drew, 

And  games  were  dropped  from  hands  of  listless  leisure 
To  hear  the  tale  anew." 

The  Greenfield  Socrates  was  a  lover  of  old  saws, 
but  the  foe  of  all  he  thought  untrue.  "Good  beginning, 
bad  ending :  Boys,"  he  exclaimed,  accenting  the  remark 
with  his  hammer,  "it  is  false.  A  good  beginning  is 
half  the  battle !  Better  yet — good  beginning,  good  end 
ing.  Now  in  reading  begin  right — read  Dickens."  He 
had  brought  from  London  a  full  set  of  his  favorite 
author,  and  the  Argonaut,  having  arrived  at  the  read 
ing  age  of  discretion,  was  introduced  to  the  "greatest 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS      99 

novelist  of  the  world."  He  immediately  began  to  satisfy 
his  hunger  for  life  as  it  is.  He  had  not  gone  far  be 
fore  he  met  the  beloved  Tiny  Tim  with  his  cheery  "God 
bless  us  every  one."  He  was  soon  aware  that  Dickens 
knew  every  street  and  alley  in  London,  and  that  his 
novels  cover  every  phase  of  Anglo-Saxon  life.  "He  is 
the  showman  of  literature,"  Riley  remarked  >when 
older;  "he  draws  the  curtain  and  there  are  the  per 
formers."  Thus  was  the  youth  lured  among  thieves; 
thus  he  heard  the  cries  of  the  mob.  On  he  went  past 
Toby  Veck  and  Master  Humphrey's  Clock,  down  with 
the  author  into  the  most  degraded  corners  of  the 
Metropolis,  among  the  vilest  creatures,  through  "the 
dirtiest  and  darkest  streets  of  the  world." 

"Hold!"  cried  the  Old  Man,  "you  are  reading  too 
fast.  Take  this,"  handing  him  Old  Curiosity  Shop; 
"memorize  this,"  referring  to  the  death  of  Little  Nell. 
"  When  I  die,  put  me  near  something  that  has  loved 
the  light  and  had  the  sky  above  it  always/ — where  do 
you  find  anything  in  books  so  full  of  feeling  as  that? 
Master  that  and  I  will  teach  you  to  recite  it." 

Without  knowing  it  the  Shoemaker  was  extending  a 
hand  to  an  American  audience  a  hundred  thousand 
strong.  The  youth  to  whom  he  spoke  was  to  rise  to  a 
shining  summit  on  the  platform.  He  was  to  rival 
Dickens'  public  readings  in  their  palmiest  days.  The 
Shoemaker  had  been  an  actor  in  London ;  he  knew  the 
rostrum  requirements,  knew  when  an  author  was  a 
failure  in  reading  from  his  own  works.  One  of  his 
dreams  was  to  take  the  youthful  Riley  to  hear  Dickens 
on  the  last  American  tour,  and  one  readily  imagines 
the  disappointment  in  the  Shoe-Shop  when  the  author 
came  no  farther  west  than  Buffalo.  "We  will  hear 
Dickens,"  repeated  the  Shoemaker,  "we  will  hear  him 


100  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

if  we  have  to  walk  to  the  Academy  of  Music  through 
a  snowstorm." 

For  several  years  after  the  Shoemaker  moved  to 
Greenfield,  the  space  round  his  shop  was  used  as  a 
hitching  ground  for  country  teams.  As  a  meeting- 
place  it  rivaled  the  space  round  the  Court  House.  There 
from  cabins  and  clearings  gathered  a  company  of  pio 
neers  to  hear  the  news  of  the  week — unselfish  and  some 
times  eccentric  types  of  Hoosier  life  and  character.  It 
was  a  fallow  feeding  ground  for  a  hungry  youth,  afford 
ing  an  opportunity  for  education  seldom  equaled  in 
the  annals  of  frontier  life.  There  were  the  "Riley 
Folks," 

"The  hale,  hard-working  people — 
The  kindly  country  people — 
That  Uncle  used  to  know"; 

the  Loehrs  and  the  Hammonds,  Tubb  Kingry  and  Tugg 
Martin,  the  Griggsby  family,  the  Local  Politician,  Old 
John  Henry,  and  Squire  Leachman,  "as  honest  a 
farmer  as  ever  drew  the  breath  of  life," — these  and 
a  score  of  others  who  were  later  enshrined  in  the 
poet's  verse — upright,  reliable  freeholders,  or  men  and 
women  striving  to  be  such.  That  there  were  excep 
tions  to  uprightness  goes  without  argument — on  off 
days,  and  rally  days,  for  instance,  when  the  Hominy 
Ridge  Clan  appeared  "with  plumes  and  banners  gay." 
Once  when  the  old  town  happened  to  have  its  face 
turned  the  other  way,  and  the  barefoot  fellows  were 
feeling  the  worse  for  their  wild  oats,  they  rode  their 
prancing  steeds  up  and  down  the  sidewalks,  the  chief 
of  the  Clan  riding  savagely  through  the  front  door  into 
a  hardware  store — thereby  supplying  the  community 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS    101 

with  excitement  for  a  week,  and  affording  loafers  an 
opportunity  to  witness  a  fine  exhibition  of  English 
wrath  when  the  Clan  rode  past  the  Shoemaker's  door. 
The  Shoemaker  deserves  our  thanks  for  directing 
Riley  to  the  best  literature.  When  he  introduced  the 
lad  to  Oliver  Twist,  he  conferred  a  favor  on  posterity. 
What  he  did  added  to  the  happiness  of  innumerable 
future  homes.  It  meant  cheer  for  the  heart-breaking, 
smiles  and  laughter  for  firesides  in  generations  to 
come. 


"Creeping  on  where  Time  has  bee,n, 
A  rare  old  plant  is  the  Ivy  greert"— - • 


thus  the  gray  haired  Mentor  repeated  the  couplet, 
gently,  "trippingly  on  the  tongue"  as  the  London  play 
ers  did — little  dreaming  that  fame  would  cling  to  him 
and  his  Shoe-Shop  as  the  ivy  to  ruins — little  dreaming 
that  the  Riley  youth  in  the  dear  afterwhiles  would 
voice  in  "The  Enduring,"  a  poem  that  would  add  charm 
to  life  wherever  the  English  tongue  is  spoken.  For 
Mentor  and  pupil  it  is  a  loving  illustration  of  what 
Dickens  had  told  them  that  nothing  beautiful  and  good 
sees  death  or  is  forgotten. 

Riley  began  to  read  Dickens  before  he  quit  school — . 
indeed,  he  neglected  the  schoolroom  for  a  course  in 
literature  at  the  Shoe-Shop.  The  influence  of  the 
novels  upon  him  at  that  impressionable  age  is  incom 
putable.  He  appropriated  their  language  and  used  it 
till  it  seemed  his  own.  He  was  so  fascinated  with  the 
stories  that  as  he  grew  to  maturity,  their  humor  and 
pathos  became  part  and  parcel  of  his  character  and 
conversation. 

From  the  Shoe-Shop  forward,  reading  became  a  re- 


102  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

quirement  so  essential  that  Riley  seldom  left  home 
without  an  old  satchel  and  a  half  dozen  books — "my 
reticule,"  he  phrased  it,  when  a  bird  of  passage. 

While  visiting  once  in  a  neighboring  town  he 
found  a  broken-backed  copy  of  The  Task,  which  held 
him  within  its  grasp  for  the  whole  of  an  April  day. 
It  contrasted  the  charms  of  rural  life  with  the  novelty 
and  allurements  of  the  town.  He  learned  that  Nature 
deceives  no  student  and  that  wisdom  is  to  be  won  by 
slow  solicitation.  He  was  warned  of  the  fatal  habit 
o>f  swallowing  -what  he  read  without  pause  or  medita 
tion.  -As  she  lay  there,  face  downward,  on  the  bare  floor 
of  a* -scantily  furnished  room,  he  was  fully  persuaded 
that  he  was  not  "the  victim  of  luxurious  ease."  "I  was 
poor,"  he  said,  "not  a  poor  vagrant  but  a  poor  bird  of 
passage  who  was  rich  without  knowing  it,  poor  as  the 
truant  Cowper  was  poor,  rambling  on  the  banks  of  the 
Thames,  subsisting  on  scarlet-hips  and  blushing  crabs." 

It  may  seem  to  some  a  trifling  affection  for  a  genius 
who  grew  by  feeding  on  Irving,  Dickens,  Harte,  and 
Cowper  to  care  deeply  for  a  series  of  school  readers. 
But  so  Riley  did.  No  other  series  of  books,  in 
his  opinion,  had  so  affected  the  morals  and  the 
happiness  of  children.  He  appreciated  to  the  ut 
most  the  sentiment  Frances  Willard  expressed  when 
she  offered  a  hundred  dollars  for  a  set  of  the  first  edi 
tion.  "The  compiler,"  he  remarked,  "was  a  genius,  and 
deserves  a  monument  from  the  generation  he  so  signally 
nourished  and  elevated."  His  favorite  of  the  series 
was  the  Fifth  Reader,  a  book  many  old  boys  and  girls 
will  remember,  compiled  by  Professor  William  H. 
McGuffey  of  Miami  University.  Riley  loved  the  book 
chiefly  for  its  poems.  "I  liked  to  memorize  them,"  he 
remarked  when  fifty  years  old.  "If  I  had  the  Reader 


THE  ARGONAUT  AMONG  OLD  BOOKS    103 

now  you  would  find  the  pages  of  poetry  turned  down 
at  the  corners,  the  verses  underlined,  and  the  margins 
decorated  with  sketches — crags,  cliffs,  landscapes  and 
faces."  In  his  latter  days  it  was  once  permitted  him  to 
see  an  old  copy  of  the  second  edition.  He  gazed  upon 
the  homely  treasures  of  its  pages  with  feelings  that 
were  tenderly  retrospective,  "feelings  that  resembled 
sorrow,"  he  said,  "as  mist  resembles  rain." 

The  compiler  of  the  Readers  had  chosen  his  selec 
tions  from  the  best  in  all  English  literature.  It 
had  been  his  object,  as  the  preface  stated,  to  present 
"the  best  specimens  of  style  and  especially  to  exert  a 
decided  and  healthy  moral  and  religious  influence." 
The  child  or  the  savage  orator,  McGuffey  observed, 
never  makes  a  mistake  in  inflection,  or  emphasis,  or 
modulation.  The  best  speakers  and  readers  were  those 
who  followed  the  impulse  of  nature  as  felt  in  their  own. 
hearts. 

Perhaps  after  all  Professor  McGuffey  did  have  a 
monument  in  the  wide,  unrivaled  influence  Riley 
exerted  on  the  platform.  The  poet  never  looked  for 
help  to  schools  of  elocution.  He  followed  "the  impulse 
of  nature  in  his  own  heart,"  as  the  old  books  directed. 

Every  reader,  as  Longfellow  remarked,  has  his  first 
book,  that  is,  one  book  among  all  others  that  fasci 
nates  his  imagination  and  satisfies  the  desires  of  his 
mind.  Riley  had  such  a  book.  Other  books  were  near 
and  dear  to  him,  the  "British  Books,"  the  Fifth  Reader, 
Oliver  Twist,  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  and  Arabian  Nights 
— so  that  about  the  Shoe-Shop  and  Court  House  he 
was  known  as  "the  lad  of  nine  books,"  probably  in  re 
sponse  to  the  tradition  that  Lincoln  was  "the  lad  of 
seven  books."  But  none  of  these  twined  their  pages 
about  his  heartstrings  as  did  Longfellow's  Poems.  It 


104  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

was  a  current  saying  in  Greenfield  that  Riley  knew  The 
Spanish  Student  by  heart.  The  charm  of  the  poems 
was  never  broken.  He  read  them  with  abiding  affec 
tion.  They  were  among  the  books  carried  from  place 
to  place  in  his  "reticule."  For  thirty  years  the  Cam 
bridge  Edition  of  Longfellow  was  his  traveling  com 
panion.  The  first  thing  to  do  on  entering  a  room  at  a 
hotel  was  to  lay  the  book  on  the  table.  It  was  his  mas 
cot.  He  did  not  always  read  it,  but  the  heavenly 
monitor  was  always  in  sight.  Whenever  he  opened  it, 
like  Longfellow  opening  The  Sketch  Book,  he  also 
opened  "the  mysterious  door  which  led  back  into  the 
haunted  chambers  of  youth." 

"Longfellow  is  my  poetry  Bible,"  he  said.  "To  read 
him  is  a  liberal  education.  The  beauty  of  his  charac 
ter  transcends  everything  else.  Outside  of  the  excel 
lence  of  his  poems,  his  is  the  sweetest  human  mind  that 
ever  existed." 

The  Argonaut  was  now  registered  among  the  lovers 
of  good  books.  He  had  made  a  fine  start  although 
he  was  not  yet  beyond  the  luring  sway  of  sidetracks 
and  byways.  The  Golden  Fleece  was  not  in  sight,  but 
now  and  again  he  caught  a  glimpse  of  shining  sum 
mits  ahead.  Guideposts  were  up  and  the  long  distance 
ones  were  pointing  vaguely  through  the  mist  to  a  de 
lectable  goal. 

"Behind  the  curtain's  mystic  fold 
The  glowing  future  lay  unrolled." 


CHAPTER  V 

OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY 

THE  tale  of  the  Argonaut  now  runs  to  the 
romantic,  up  hill  and  down  dale  with  a  vender 
of  "Standard  Remedies,"  Doctor  S.  B.  McCrillus 
of  Anderson,  Indiana,  the  county-seat  of  a  neighboring 
county,  and  the  reader  is  invited  to  think  happily  of  a 
holiday  spirit  that  was  tolerant  of  mirth  and  amuse 
ment. 

Doctor  McCrillus  was  not  a  stranger  to  Greenfield. 
He  was  cordially  interested  in  Captain  Riley,  and  it 
is  due  him  and  the  eloquent  Captain  to  digress  a  mo 
ment  from  the  regular  narrative. 

"Neighbor  Derby,  shake  hands  with  'Whit'  Riley, 
son  of  Reuben  Riley,  the  Greenfield  attorney,"  said  the 
Doctor  to  a  farmer  one  day,  while  touring  the  country. 
The  farmer  manifesting  ignorance  of  the  attorney,  the 
Doctor's  voice  instantly  rose  to  the  pitch  of  fervor. 
"Don't  you  know  Reuben  Riley,  Captain  Reuben  A. 
Riley  ?  He  is  the  most  eloquent  man  in  the  state." 

This  was  not  said  in  jest.  The  Doctor  had  listened 
to  a  few  celebrated  pioneer  preachers.  He  had  on 
several  occasions  heard  Morton,  Indiana's  "War  Gov 
ernor,"  Richard  Thompson,  Dan  Vorhees,  and  other 
political  torch-lights  of  his  time;  but  "not  one  of  them," 
said  he,  "can  hold  a  candle  to  the  eloquence  of  Captain 
Riley.  I  repeat  it:  Reuben  Riley  is  the  most  eloquent 
orator  in  the  state."  This  may  have  been  an  exaggera 
tion,  but  it  was  not  one  to  the  Doctor.  There  were  a 

105 


106  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

score  of  old  patriots  in  Greenfield  who  said  the  same. 
As  eminent  an  authority  as  Horace  Greeley,  who  had 
heard  the  fluent  Captain  in  the  Fremont  campaign,  held 
a  similar  view.  The  Doctor  had  a  theory  that  the  great 
est  speeches  go  unrecorded.  "They  are  traditions," 
3aid  he,  "and  several  Riley  speeches  belong  to  that 
class."  He  had  heard  the  Captain  at  a  memorial  meet 
ing  a  few  days  after  Lincoln's  assassination.  He  re 
called  the  indefinable  poise  of  the  orator,  the  flash  of 
his  dark  eye,  and  the  magical  effect  of  his  gestures. 
The  eulogy  so  impressed  him  that  after  the  lapse  of 
half  a  lifetime  he  could  recall  the  solemn  images  of  the 
occasion  as  they  appeared  "in  their  morning  luster." 
Old  residents  of  Greenfield  refer  to  it  as  the  "Lost 
Speech."  The  Doctor  remembered  that  the  eulogist 
prefaced  the  speech  with  two  texts,  one  from  Cowper 
and  the  other  from  the  Bible ;  the  first — 

"God  moves  in  a  mysterious  way 

His  wonders  to  perform ; 
He  plants  his  footsteps  in  the  sea, 
And  rides  upon  the  storm" : 

and  the  second,  "I  will  make  judgment  the  line,  and 
righteousness  the  plummet:  and  the  hail  shall  sweep 
away  the  refuge  of  lies  and  the  waters  shall  overflow 
the  hiding  place."  "When  Captain  Riley  spoke,"  added 
the  Doctor,  "you  knew  God  moves  in  a  mysterious 
way.  You  could  see  Him  in  the  tempest,  in  the  flames 
of  devouring  fire;  you  could  hear  Him  in  the  earth 
quake." 

One  brief  paragraph  of  the  speech  remains ;  the  re 
mainder  was  the  gift  of  inspiration  under  the  spell  of 
the  occasion.  "Never,"  the  orator  wrote  on  an  envelope 
a  moment  before  rising  to  speak,  "never  in  the  history 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      107 

of  recorded  time  has  the  transition  from  free,  exultant, 
forgiving,  universal  joy,  been  so  quick,  so  sudden,  to 
universal  gloom  and  sorrow.  We  rejoice  with  joy  un 
speakable  at  the  realized  salvation  of  our  government. 
We  are  stricken  with  horror  dumb,  with  dark  fore 
bodings,  almost  with  despair,  at  this  blackest  crime 
against  the  nation — against  humanity — the  assassi 
nation  of  Abraham  Lincoln." 

After  he  had  finished,  the  orator  sat  down  in  the 
silence  and  wept  with  the  crowd.  He  had  opened  the 
fountains  of  universal  sorrow.  A  comrade  in  tears  re 
minded  him  of  a  battle-torn  flag  returned  from  the  war, 
which  was  to  share  the  honors  of  the  day.  Promptly 
rising  to  the  occasion,  he  paid  a  tribute  to  the  Stars 
and  Stripes  that  brought  the  audience  to  its  feet  with 
enthusiasm  as  uncontrollable  as  the  silence  that  fol 
lowed  the  tribute  to  the  dead  President  was  profound 
and  sorrowful. 

Since  the  poet's  grandmother  Riley  held  the  people 
captive  in  camp-meetings,  and  since  his  father  was  the 
peer  of  the  most  eloquent  men  in  Indiana,  it  would 
seem  that  Doctor  McCrillus  had  ground  for  attributing 
the  poet's  success  on  the  platform  to  heredity.  "The 
poet  was  a  descendant  of  speech-makers,"  said  the 
Doctor.  "Never  a  pose  before  the  footlights,  never 
a  gesture  or  smile  that  could  not  be  traced  back  to  the 
eloquence  of  his  father." 

The  Doctor  was  a  man  of  warm  sympathies  but  in 
clined  at  times  to  eccentricity.  His  long,  white 
"breezy  whiskers"  were  a  part  of  the  landscape. 
As  Mrs.  Spottletoe  would  say,  they  were  the  lode 
star  of  his  existence.  "On  a  clear  day,"  said  Riley, 
"you  could  see  them  from  Hardscrabble  to  Point  Isa 
bel."  Although  widely  known  for  his  quaint  ways  and 


108  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"old-school  oddities,"  he  was  not  an  average  drug  ped- 
ler  by  any  means.  Nor  did  he  make  average  claims  for 
his  "Standard  Remedies."  He  allowed  the  great  public 
to  be  the  judge.  "His  marvelous  brews  and  concoc 
tions,"  said  Riley,  "relieved  every  form  of  distress 
from 

The  pinch  of  tight  shoes 
To  a  dose  of  the  blues." 

Riley  started  out  with  the  Doctor  on  the  "Standard 
Remedy"  excursions  in  the  summer  of  1872  and  con 
tinued  with  him  irregularly  for  two  years.  On  the  road 
into  Greenfield  the  Doctor  had  seen  some  fine 
examples  of  sign-painting  on  the  Fair  Ground 
fence,  advertising  the  Farmer's  Grocery  and  other 
merchants  of  the  town.  While  he  and  a  young  travel 
ing  recruit  whom  he  had  already  enlisted  were  stand 
ing  by  their  wagon  near  the  Court  House,  they  "were 
approached,"  said  the  Doctor,  "by  a  verdant  looking 
young  fellow  dressed  in  overalls,  who  was  hunting 
work.  I  noticed  the  overalls  for  my  other  sign-painter 
wore  loud  clothes." 

"Do  you  need  a  sign-painter?"  he  asked. 

"I  have  one,"  replied  the  Doctor ;  "there  he  is ;  shake 
hands  with  James  McClanahan." 

But  the  man  in  overalls  was  in  earnest.  He  hoped 
that  the  outside  world  would  yield  him  favors  his 
native  town  denied. 

"Have  you  seen  any  of  my  work?"  he  continued. 

The  Doctor  had  not  seen  it. 

"How  did  you  come  in?" 

"By  the  Fair  Ground." 

"Did  you  see  some  large  signs  there  on  the  fence?" 

"Yes,"  answered  the  Doctor. 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      109 

"I  made  them,"  said  Riley. 

The  Doctor  now  being  interested  assured  him  he  had 
never  seen  work  in  that  line  so  skilfully  done,  and  in 
quired  his  name. 

"James  Riley,"  was  the  reply,  "Jim  Riley,  they  call 
me  round  town." 

"Any  relation  to  Reuben  Riley?" 

"My  father,"  answered  James. 

That  he  might  consider  young  Riley's  proposal  a 
few  moments  longer,  the  Doctor  turned  aside  to  deliver 
some  "Remedies"  to  the  drug  stores  while  the  two  sign- 
painters  began  a  friendship  that  was  never  broken. 
Riley  took  his  new  friend  to  see  other  samples  of  his 
work,  among  them  the  large  advertising  card  in  the 
post-office.  Before  returning  to  the  wagon  the  Doctor 
went  to  the  law  office  of  the  elder  Riley,  with  whom 
he  talked  a  few  minutes  on  current  issues,  not  neglect 
ing  to  compliment  the  attorney  on  the  "Lost  Speech" 
and  other  efforts  of  like  nature. 

"Your  son  James  wants  to  travel  with  me,"  he  re 
marked  as  he  rose  to  go. 

"My  God !"  cried  the  father,  not  bitterly  but  sorrow 
fully;  "if  you  can  make  anything  out  of  him  take  him 
along." 

For  two  years  or  more  the  father  had  been  in  doubt 
about  his  son's  ability  to  make  a  living.  The  Doctor 
ventured  the  opinion  that  the  son  had  merit.  "There 
must  be  something  to  him,"  he  said;  "you  forget;  he 
is  the  son  of  Reuben  Riley." 

This  compliment  pleased  the  father  greatly,  so  they 
quickly  agreed  that  since  the  son  was  of  age  he 
should  be  the  architect  of  his  own  fortune.  The  com 
pact  the  Doctor  made  for  the  son's  service  was,  in  part, 
word  for  word,  Mrs.  Jarley's  agreement  when  she  em- 


110  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

ployed  Little  Nell  to  point  out  her  wax-work  figures 
to  the  spectators.  And  it  was  "open  air  wagrancy,"  too, 
although  occasionally  the  Doctor  did  exhibit  his  wares 
in  town  halls,  taverns  and  vacant  store-rooms.  As  to 
salary  (readers  of  Dickens  will  remember) ,  Mrs.  Jarley 
could  pledge  herself  to  no  specific  sum  until  she  had 
sufficiently  tested  Nell's  abilities  and  watched  her  in 
the  performance  of  her  duties.  But  board  and  lodging 
she  bound  herself  to  provide,  and  she  furthermore 
"passed  her  word"  that  the  board  should  always  be 
good  in  quality,  and  in  quantity  plentiful.  Precisely 
such  an  agreement  the  doctor  made  for  the  services 
of  young  Riley.  He  promised  fried  chicken  at  farm 
houses  whenever  the  "Remedy"  show  was  in  the  neigh 
borhood  of  dinner  bells. 

"You  are  going  with  us,  James,"  said  the  Doctor 
as  he  approached  the  wagon ;  "we  have  a  few  deliveries 
to  make;  be  ready  when  we  return — have  your  Sun 
day  clothes  packed." 

"I  haven't  an  extra  coat  to  my  back,"  was  the  gay 
reply.  What  did  Riley  care  about  a  change  of  clothes 
in  June,  when  he  was  building  a  bridge  into  Wonder 
land? 

So,  a  few  days  later,  the  three  birds  of  passage 
climbed  to  their  high  seats  on  the  wagon  and  drove 
away  north  on  the  Pendleton  road,  behind  a  glossy 
span  of  sorrel  horses  that  "in  their  perfect  beauty  and 
symmetry*  high  heads  and  tossing  manes,"  as  Riley 
characterized  them  years  afterward,  "looked  as  though 
they  were  just  prancing  out  of  an  Arabian  dream." 

"Instantly,"  said  Riley,  recalling  the  wayfaring  days, 
"I  started  on  my  voyage  for  the  Golden  Fleece.  It 
was  delightful  to  bowl  over  the  country.  My  blood  ran 
through  me  like  a  gulf-stream.  I  laughed  all  the  time. 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      111 

Miles  and  miles  of  somber  landscapes  were  made  bright 
with  merry  song  and  when  the  sun  shone  and  all  the 
golden  summer  lay  spread  out  before  me,  it  was 
glorious.  I  drifted  on  through  it  like  a  wisp  of  thistle 
down,  careless  of  how,  or  when,  or  where  the  wind 
should  anchor  me." 

He  was  twenty-two  years  old,  but  in  habit  and 
appearance  several  years  younger — an  original  young 
man,  full  of  fire  and  faith  but  devoid  of  the  experience 
which  comes  from  traveling.  His  neighbors  did  not 
take  him  for  a  poet,  although  he  looked  out  of  large, 
thoughtful  eyes.  He  was  compactly  built,  had  a  full 
face  and  fair  complexion,  reminding  one  of  a  way 
ward  college  boy  whose  mind  was  on  pranks  instead  of 
books.  He  was  generous  to  a  fault  and  modest  as  a 
girl  of  fifteen. 

At  Anderson  there  was  a  halt  of  three  weeks  to  make 
preparations  for  a  lengthy  excursion.  The  Doctor  had 
previously  vended  his  "Remedies"  only  in  neighboring 
counties.  Now  that  he  had  another  sign-painter,  and, 
as  was  soon  discovered,  a  minstrel  and  theatrical  per 
former  as  well,  he  would  carry  his  message  to  remote 
districts.  Anderson  was  to  be  the  hub  of  his  travels, 
and,  as  it  turned  out,  for  a  few  years  the  rival  of  Green 
field  in  claiming  the  residence  of  the  poet. 

Impressions  of  Riley's  new  home  on  White  River  very 
naturally  crept  into  his  letters.  "Anderson,"  he  wrote 
a  year  or  so  later,  "is  a  very  handsome  little  town  of 
about  five  thousand  inhabitants — good  people,  speaking 
generally,  although  of  course  it  takes  all  kinds  of  people 
and  so  forth.  Vice  is  not  as  rampant  here  as  in  days  of 
old.  It  grows  weaker  every  day,  and  religion  and  law, 
hand  in  hand,  are  fast  driving  it  from  the  land.  If  the 
city  has  one  blight,  it  is  its  Court  House.  That  really; 


112  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

looks  out  of  place  and  uncomfortable,  surrounded  as  it 
is  by  beautiful  business  blocks ;  and  I  sometimes  think 
it  is  a  pity  it  could  not  attend  the  Old  Settlers'  meet 
ing,  for  it  could  go  farther  back  than  the  oldest  inhabi 
tant  and  tell  of  the  youthful  prowess  of  Indiana,  espe 
cially  of  the  Indian  chief,  Anderson,  for  whom  the  town 
was  named.  One  can  almost  hear  the  old-time  war 
whoop  echoes  lurking  around  in  its  misty,  time-dimmed 
architecture." 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  the  town,  Riley  designed  a 
special  trade-mark  for  the  "Popular  Standard  Reme 
dies,"  a  work  which  required  three  days  of  experiment 
and  ingenuity.  "Your  Oriental  Liniment,"  said  he  to 
the  Doctor,  "is  advertised  'best  on  earth/  and  your  pa 
trons  must  be  protected  against  fraud  and  imposition. 
Your  circular  says  'good  for  sprains  and  bruises.'  Add 
'bee  stings.' '  The  apiarian  disorder  was  accordingly 
listed  and  there  resulted  an  increase  in  business. 

Riley  also  won  local  recognition  by  painting  a  huge 
sign  on  the  Court  House  fence.  Chief  interest  however 
centered  in  a  "hummer" — in  rhyme — painted  at  the 
corner  of  Meridian  and  Bolivar  Streets,  which  drew 
from  the  Weekly  Herald  the  opinion  that  the  "Painter 
Poet"  had  immortalized  a  popular  jeweler  of  the  town. 
School  children  repeated  it  trippingly: 

"We  would  advise  you  all  to  see 
The  sparkling  Gems  and  Jewelry 
At  John  A  wait's  and  be  content 
To  know  your  money's  wisely  spent 
At  his  immense  establishment." 

The  preparation  for  the  "Standard  Remedy"  wander 
ings  included  a  long  spring  wagon  made  in  Ohio,  from 
which  fact  it  received  its  name,  the  "Buckeye."  The 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      113 

wagon  was  equipped  with  buffalo  robes  for  cool  days, 
and  three  big  boxes  covered  with  leather  for  protection 
from  rain — one  box  under  a  high  seat  in  front  and  two 
larger  ones  back  of  it  with  a  small  box  and  seat-pad  on 
top, 

"Where  the  sign-painters  sat 
To  giggle  and  chat — 
With  their  feet  high  and  dry 
And  their  heads  in  the  sky."' 

For  that  day  it  was  an  imposing  spectacle  with  the 
Doctor's  "breezy  whiskers"  and  the  merry  pair  of 
painters  back  of  him,  their  hats  on  one  side,  spinning 
down  "the  grooves  of  time/'  behind  a  span  of  horses 
sniffing  the  wind.  Those  fiery  steeds  possessed  the  vir 
tues  of  Bucephalus.  They  were  as  fleet  as  any 

"That  ever  cantered  wild  and  free 
Across  the  plains  of  Araby." 

Sometimes  the  "Buckeye"  carried  a  thousand  dollars' 
worth  of  "Remedies."  Usually  a  trip  consumed  two 
weeks  and  frequently  covered  a  distance  of  two  hun 
dred  miles.  One  of  the  first  midsummer  excursions 
led  out  by  way  of  Middletown,  Hagerstown  and  Cam 
bridge  City,  on  down  to  the  White  River  Valley,  re 
puted  by  Riley,  and  artists  after  him,  to  be  "the  most 
beautiful  spot  on  God's  earth."  Another  excursion  led 
to  the  northwest,  through  Alexandria,  Elwood  and  Ko- 
komo,  to  "the  banks  of  Deer  Creek."  When  sales  were 
numerous  the  Doctor  traveled  but  a  few  miles  a  day. 
Driving  into  a  town  he  would  leave  two  or  three  dozen 
bottles  at  the  drug  store  and  soon  thereafter,  half  a 
mile  out,  a  new  sign  appeared:  "Go  to  Manafee's  for 


114  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

McCrillus  Popular  Remedies."  He  also  sold  to  fanners 
while  the  sign-painters  nailed  sign-boards  to  trees  and 
gate-posts.  The  company,  preferring  the  farmer's  hos 
pitable  board  to  the  hotels,  often  remained  over  night 
in  the  country.  Fried  chicken  was  the  rule  on  crisp  au 
tumn  days,  if  the  poet  and  his  chum  could  find  one 
roosting  on  the  manger  when  they  went  out  with  the 
farmer  early  in  the  morning  to  feed  the  stock. 

Cool  spring  water  was  also  the  rule.  Sweeter  draughts 
were  never  quaffed  than  those  which  flowed  from  the 
mossy  brim  of  the  oaken  buckets  chained  to  the  "well- 
sweeps"  of  that  time.  The  presence  of  giggling  coun 
try  girls  always  afforded  merriment.  The  rural  pic 
tures  were  never  wanting  in  interest  if  the  travelers 
could  stay  their  winding  pilgrimage, 

"Then  go  their  way,  remembering  still 
The  wayside  well  beneath  the  hill." 

An  excursion  westward  led  as  far  away  as  the  river 
counties  of  the  Wabash.  One  day  the  Doctor  became 
reminiscent.  Something  reminded  him  of  a  rich  bach 
elor  he  knew,  who  went  to  Illinois  to  buy  land  of  a 
widow,  who,  the  bachelor  discovered  on  reaching  her 
door,  was  the  girl  he  had  loved  when  she  lived  with  his 
mother  on  a  farm  in  Ohio.  Thus  the  Argonaut  found 
the  thread  of  gold  for  a  ballad,  "Farmer  Whipple — 
Bachelor,"  which  soon  saw  the  light  in  the  "Original 
Poetry"  column  of  the  Greenfield  News. 

Riley  did  not  travel  down  the  river  as  far  as  Old 
Vincennes,  but  far  enough  for  his  fancy,  a  few  years 
later,  in  the  guise  and  dialect  of  a  pedler,  to  canvass 
the  counties  for  a  patent  churn.  This  lively  picture 
from  his  poem,  "Regardin'  Terry  Hut,"  is  mainly  per 
sonal  experience: 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      115 

"I've  travelled  round  the  grand  old  State 
Of  Indiany,  lots,  o'  late ! — 
I've  canvassed  Crawf  erdsville  and  sweat 
Around  the  town  o'  Lafayette ; 
I've  saw  a  many  a  County-seat 
I  ust  to  think  was  hard  to  beat : 
At  constant  dreenage  and  expense 
I've  worked  Greencastle  and  Vincennes — 
Drapped  out  of  Putnam  into  Clay, 
Owen,  and  on  down  thataway 
Plum  into  Knox,  on  the  back-track 
Fer  home  ag'in — and  glad  I'm  back! — 
I've  saw  these  towns,  as  I  say — but 
They's  none  'at  beats  old  Terry  Hut!" 

It  is  interesting  to  note  the  poet's  play  of  fancy 
around  the  "old  churn."  It  appeared  in  one  of  his 
first  poems  to  receive  eastern  recognition,  then  en 
titled,  "A  Destiny,"  in  which  a  farmer  chased  a  scrap 
of  paper  over  the  fence  and  across  the  field,  and  cap 
turing  it,  scratched  his  head  and  pondered  over  a  rhyme 
and  the  pencil-sketch  of  a  dairy  maid  under  it,  and  then 
with  the  complacency  of  ignorance  saw  through  the 
whole  business  of  dreaming  and  poetry : 

"I  see  the  p'int  to  the  whole  concern — 
He's  studied  out  a  patent  churn !" 

Strictly  speaking  the  churn  was  a  sieve  patented  by  a 
^country  poetf  of  Hancock  County,  the  "corduroy 
poet,"  Riley  sometimes  called  him,  and  at  other  times, 
Professor  Startailer  or  the  "seersucker  poet."  The 
patentee,  all  aflame  with  the  prospect  of  a  fortune,  sold 
territory  for  the  sale  of  the  sieve,  to  his  friends.  "He 
let  us  in  on  velvet,"  said  Riley ;  "a  friend  and  I  bought 
two  border  counties  near  Ft.  Wayne.  I  still  have 
Adams  County,"  he  laughingly  averred  forty  years 
after. 


116  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

In  the  preface  to  his  first  book,  Riley  pleasantly  re 
called  the  "country  poet/'  but  he  did  not  pleasantly 
remember  the  inventor  of  the  sieve.  A  few  years  after 
buying  Adams  County,  he  got  his  revenge  by  using  the 
inventor's  name  as  a  nom  de  plume  in  a  weekly  paper. 

After  the  lengthy  excursion  on  the  Wabash,  the 
medical  troupe  made  a  short  one  nearer  home.  The 
sign-painters  ingeniously  manifested  the  "holiday 
spirit"  one  evening  at  Cadiz,  a  small  town  in  Henry 
County.  Breezes  blew  from  the  Blue  River  hills,  wood 
fires  flamed  on  the  edge  of  the  forest,  lamps  shone 
dimly  from  the  street  corners  and  tin  lanterns  hung 
in  the  trees.  The  village  that  midsummer  night  was  as 
bewitching  to  Riley  as  Cadiz,  the  city  of  beauty  and 
love  in  sunny  Spain,  was  to  Longfellow.  If  the  daugh 
ters  of  Spain  were  matchless  in  grace  and  figure,  so 
were  the  bright-eyed  maidens  of  the  Hoosier  hamlet 
fair  and  charming.  The  little  town,  surrounded  by 
dense  woodlands,  was  to  Riley  the  Dreamland  of  the 
frontier.  He  was  in  the  mood  to  enjoy  it ;  so  were  the 
villagers.  They  were  as  gleeful  as  the  peasants  and 
cavaliers  of  Longfellow's  Spain. 

The  medical  troupe  revived  happy  memories.  The 
Doctor  had  been  in  Cadiz  the  previous  summer.  "I 
have  now  returned,"  said  he,  "with  a  menagerie"  (re 
ferring  to  his  two  sign-painters) .  "They  are  showmen 
from  the  circus — just  canvassing  temporarily  for  Euro 
pean  Balsam."  The  "menagerie"  summoned  a  youthful 
company  from  every  nook  and  alley.  Plowboys  and 
country  lassies  came  from  the  farms.  They  were  "light 
of  heart  and  heel,"  and  responded  merrily  to  the  music 
of  the  French  harp  and  guitar.  A  side-show  was  im 
provised  in  the  middle  of  the  street.  Riley  strapped  an 
empty  soap  box  to  his  shoulders,  turned  a  crank  in 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      117 

imitation  of  an  organ-grinder  and  played  the  French 
harp  while  his  chum  called  attention  to  the  Wild  Girl 
from  the  Congo  (a  local  merry-maker),  who,  in  torn 
garments  and  long-disheveled  hair,  at  the  opportune 
moment,  rose  like  a  phantom  from  the  deep  box  on  the 
wagon.  She  was  the  Savage  Wonder,  and  volubly  did 
the  showmen  describe  her  strange  ancestry  and  the 
African  jungles  where  she  had  been  captured. 

A  novel  feature  of  the  evening  came  when  Riley 
wrapped  his  traveling  chum  in  the  buffalo  robes  and 
led  him  on  all  fours  around  the  wagon  and  then  told  the 
story  of  a  "Little  Boy  who  went  out  into  the  woods  to 
shoot  a  bear."  The  alarming  "Woo-oah,"  the  great  big 
sycamore  tree,  the  four  broken  legs  when  the  boy 
chopped  off  the  limb  and  the  bear  fell  "clean  to  the 
ground" — all  were  there,  soon  to  be  elaborated  into  the 
famous  "Bear  Story,"  which  in  due  time  became  a 
favorite  number  in  the  poet's  public  readings,  and  the 
delight  of  children  who  read  the  "Child-World"  a  gen 
eration  later.  The  little  crowd  chuckled  at  the  men 
tion  of  "sycamore  tree."  Every  lad  present  knew  it 
was  all  but  impossible  for  boy  or  bear  to  climb  one — 
a  fact  which  many  older  heads  in  the  poet's  audi 
ence  of  a  later  period  did  not  know.  The  bear  could 
climb  an  oak  or  poplar,  but  not  a  sycamore  tree — and 
that  was  the  "nub"  to  the  story,  which  made  the  inno 
cent  ignorance  of  the  "Little  Boy"  charming  and  true 
to  life. 

Up  to  this  point  the  performance  had  been  crude — 
but  about  ten  o'clock  the  voice  of  the  tenor  rose  to 
the  realms  of  art  and  the  joy  of  the  audience  to  the 
plane  of  rapture.  Friends  brought  Riley  a  guitar, 
borrowed  for  the  occasion.  At  last  the  hour  had  come 
for  the  instrument  to  respond  to  the  touch  of  a  master. 


118  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Such  harmony  the  Blue  River  hills  had  never  known. 
'That  fellow,"  said  a  barber,  whose  shop  was  near, 
"will  have  to  stop  playing  or  I'll  have  to  stop  shaving." 
None  there  had  heard  minstrelsy  half  so  sweet.  It  was 
clear  to  them  that  night,  as  it  was  always  clear  to  the 
performer,  that  when  a  master  "tangles  his  fingers  in 
the  strings  of  a  guitar  there  is  an  indefinable  some 
thing  in  its  tone  that  is  not  all  of  earth." 

One  week  in  autumn  the  medical  troupe  found  itself 
far  away  on  the  St.  Mary's  River,  near  the  Ohio 
state  line.  "We  are  going  home  to-day,  boys,"  said  the 
Doctor.  It  was  eighty  miles,  but  there  was  something 
in  the  speed  of  the  sorrels  that  said  they  could  make  it. 
Sales  had  been  unusually  good,  and  the  Doctor  had  by 
trading  filled  his  boxes  with  dry  goods,  groceries  and 
hardware. 

On  that  notable  trip,  Riley  was  a  veritable  Tom  Pinch 
seeking  his  fortune.  Unlike  Tom  on  the  London  coach, 
he  did  not  pass  "places  famous  in  history  and  fable" ; 
but  he  witnessed  new  scenes.  He  made  discoveries.  He 
was  a  spectator  of  nature  and  of  men's  fortunes  and 
how  they  played  their  parts.  He  saw  things  "as  from  a 
common  theater."  That  joyous  ride  was  for  years  the 
theme  of  his  narrative.  Although  his  "bump  of  local 
ity"  was  as  inefficient  then  as  it  was  afterward,  he  saw 
things  and  remembered  what  he  saw.  John  Hay  was 
wont  to  say  that  his  vision  and  the  vividness  and  accu 
racy  of  his  memory  were  the  secrets  of  his  success.  If 
it  were  a  question  of  vision  (omitting  the  element  of 
place)  he  could  trace  back  the  eighty-mile  run  link  by 
link.  His  indefinite  purpose  added  zest  to  it.  "I  was 
driven  by  the  uncertain  currents  of  existence,"  he 
said,  "yet  the  novelty  and  uncertainty  of  it  were  posi 
tively  ecstatic."  Like  Walter  Scott,  he  was  makin'  him- 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      119 

self  a'  the  time  but  did  na  ken  maybe  what  he  was 
about  till  years  had  passed. 

They  left  the  river  at  a  place  called  The  Devil's  Race 
Ground.  The  morning  was  crisp  and  bright,  and  the 
sorrels  were  homeward  bound.  The  Doctor  held  the 
lines — "eighty  breezy  miles  were  written  in  his  very 
whiskers."  The  sign-painters  were  at  the  top-notch 
of  being.  As  they  sped  onward  the  poet's  heart  "ran 
riot  with  the  Muse,"  and  his  chum  accented  the  pleas 
ure  at  every  turn  in  the  road.  They  were  two  merry 
boys 

"Full  of  fancy— full  of  folly- 
Full  of  jollity  and  fun, 
Like  the  South  Wind  and  the  S.un." 

There  was  enough  medley  in  the  day  (in  the  words  of 
Pope)  to  "make  their  souls  dance  upon  a  jig  to 
heaven."  On  they  went,  voyaging  with  the  thistle 
down,  south  by  west,  a  swift  Lake  Erie  wind  at  their 
backs,  their  cheeks  flushed  like  winter  apples,  sailing 
away  under  fleecy  clouds, — past  hedges — past  country 
wagons  —  past  sinewy  woodsmen  —  past  rosy-cheeked 
schoolboys  —  rumbling  over  culverts  —  over  gurgling 
streams — over  the  "underground  railroad" — past  ducks 
and  geese  and  the  peacock  on  the  sunny  side  of  the  barn 
yard — down  a  steep  incline  across  the  Wabash  at  Buena 
Vista — round  the  Loblolly  Swampland — round  Sugar 
Island — past  prehistoric  mounds — past  morning-glory 
vines  climbing  over  cabin  homes — past  the  dimpled 
cheeks  of  babyhood — past  dog-fennel  beds,  gravel  beds 
and  through  spice-brush  ravines  on  to  Pennville.  There 
they  cooled  the  horses'  hoofs  in  the  Salamonie,  and  there 
the  poet  saw 

"The  hills  slope  as  soft  as  the  dawn  down  to  noon 
While  the  river  ran  by  like  an  old  fiddle-tune." 


120  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Out  of  town  again.  Mark  Twain,  traveling  in  the 
stage-coach  across  the  plains  to  see  strange  lands  and 
wonderful  people,  was  not  more  animated.  Onward 
bowled  the  "Buckeye"  past  the  haymakers,  the  new- 
mown  clover  and  the  long  windrows  reaching  like  mo 
tionless  waves  from  end  to  end  of  the  field — under  the 
gnarled  willow  tree  where  barefooted  children  fought 
and  clung  to  the  swing,  "waitin'  fer  the  cat  to  die" — 
past  the  raising  bee  and  the  log  barn  springing  up  "at 
the  wagging  of  the  fiddlestick" — past  stake-and-rider 
fences — past  log  huts  and  their  stick-chimneys — from 
Pennville  to  the  Panhandle  Route,  where  the  poet  saw 
the  "iron  horse  tugging  away  at  a  row  of  freight  cars 
long  as  Paradise  Lost" — then  down  the  line  a  mile  to 
Red  Key  to  joke  with  the  operator  while  a  farmer 
thrashed  the  baggage-smasher — across  the  track  for 
refreshments  with  the  restaurant  man  whose  luscious 
viands  had  been  the  talk  of  the  town ;  where  (in  Riley 
rhyme) 

"Strawberries  blushed  with  a  rosy  gleam 
On  islands  of  sugar  in  oceans  of  cream ; 
And  the  lips  of  the  maiden  were  tinged  with  a  glow 
The  kiss  of  a  lover  could  never  bestow." 

Then  a  detour  of  the  Pioneer  Fair,  where  Riley 
caught  a  glimpse  of  Grandfather  Squeers  and  the  old 
settlers  about  him,  like  the  trees,  repeating  their  rustic 
legends  to  one  another.  But  the  crying  babies  and  El- 
viry  at  the  organ  awkwardly  feeling  her  way  up  and 
down  the  keys  for  the  "Vacant  Chair"  and  the  "Old 
Camp  Ground"  were  more  than  his  sense  of  melody 
could  stand.  The  sorrels,  too,  were  restless.  It  was 
two  o'clock  and  they  had  not  reached  their  half-way 
point.  Westward-ho  down  the  road  again  by  the  race 
track  to  see  the  "side-wheelers"  pace  neck  and  neck 


THE  MOTHER'S  GIRLHOOD  HOME  ON  THE  MISSISSINEWA 


. 


STANDARD  REMEDY  TRADE-MARK 
Designed  by  Riley 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      121 

"twixt  the  flag  and  the  wire" — now  gazing  on  the 
purple  haze  that  hung  over  the  valley  where  the  river 
flowed — now  skirting  sunny  glens  where  the  bees 
droned  their  honey-song  in  the  golden-rods — threading 
the  winding  seclusion  of  the  river  road — fording  the 
creek  near  the  rustic  bridge  of  Wonderland — alighting 
a  moment  at  the  Indian  spring  for  a  draught 

"From  the  old-fashioned  gourd  that  was  sweeter,  by 

odds, 
Than  the  goblets  of  gold  at  the  lips  of  the  gods !" 

On  down  the  old  Muncie  Trail  through  the  sumac 
thickets  with  visions  of  superstitions,  powwows,  and 
Red  Men  smoking  the  fragrant  kinnik-kinnik — through 
the  grapevine  wilderness  known  to  the  oldest  inhabitant 
as  the  feeding  ground  of  passenger  pigeons  that  then 
as  in  the  days  of  Audubon  "glided  aloft  in  flocks  and 
spirally  descended  to  sweep  like  the  wind  among  the 
trees" — on  through  enchanted  aisles 

"Adown  deep  glades  where  the  forest  shades 
Were  dim  as  the  dusk  of  day 
On  the  Mississinewa." 

Magical  name  for  Riley!  Long  had  he  cherished  it 
in  memory  as  the  girlhood  home  of  his  mother. 

The  dawn  of  recollection  for  him  dated  from  a  mem 
ory  of  his  mother's  dewy  blue  eyes  when  he  stood  by 
her  chair  near  their  log-cottage  fire  while  she  told  him 
the  stories  of  the  long  ago  on  the  Mississinewa.  Ten 
derly  he  alluded  to  it  afterward  in  his  poem,  "Envoy": 

"Then  the  face  of  a  Mother  looks  back,  through  the 

mist 

Of  the  tears  that  are  welling ;  and,  lucent  with  light, 
I  see  the  dear  smile  of  the  lips  I  have  kissed 
As  she  knelt  by  my  cradle  at  morning  and  night." 


122  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

There  are  periods  in  the  life  of  every  poet  when  the 
enjoyment  of  a  week  is  narrowed  down  to  the  ecstasy 
of  an  hour.  Such  an  interlude  was  Riley's  while  thread 
ing  the  wonderland  of  the  Mississinewa.  From  that 
hour  until  midnight  his  heart  was  athrill  at  the  ease 
with  which  his  ideas  found  birth  and  expression.  The 
trees  were  harps  of  melody.  The  very  fence  panels 
flowed  along  the  wayside  in  poetic  meter.  On  he  went 

"Down  the  current  of  his  dreams,  gliding  away 
To  the  dim  harbor  of  another  day," 

the  jingle  of  his  rhymes  keeping  time  with  the  jingle 
of  the  bridles — past  the  wake  of  the  hurricane  where 
"the  voice  of  the  Lord  had  broken  the  cedars" — through 
the  mellow  gloom — through  the  smoke  where  the  wood 
peckers  hammered  the  dead  limbs  in  the  clearing — past 
cow-bells  clinking  sweeter  tunes  than  "Money  Musk" — 
past  squadrons  of  wild  turkeys  gobbling  in  the  woods — 
past  red  and  yellow  tomatoes  on  the  garden  fence — past 
the  campaign  grove  where  the  candidate  squandered  his 
spread-eagle  rhetoric — past  the  Greeley  flagpole  with 
its  streamer  flying  to  defeat — past  bushwhackers — 
past  the  circuit  rider  on  his  way  from  the  basket  meet 
ing — down  the  Bee  Line  racing  with  the  "cow-catcher" 
on  the  Accommodation  Train — past  the  cider  mill  and 
apple  tree,  the  country  frolic  which  drew  obliging  fam 
ilies  together  when  the  fruit  was  to  be  harvested — past 
the  Orchard  Lands  of  Long  Ago, 

"Catching  the  apples'  faint  perfume 
And  mingling  with  it,  fragrant  hints  of  pear 
And  musky  melon  ripening  somewhere." 

"And  then  the  ride,"  said  Riley,  "into  the  saintly  twi 
light,  toward  the  clouds  in  the  west  that  hid  the  silver 
sickle  of  the  moon  with  their  dusky  locks.  How  inex- 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY      123 

pressibly  divine  was  the  drapery  of  the  night  that  de 
scended  upon  us."  There  were  sparks  from  the  horses' 
hoofs  as  they  accelerated  their  speed.  There  were  mam 
moth  castles  and  battlements  across  the  fields,  for  so  the 
woodland  shadows  seemed.  Then  came  the  sudden 
shower  that  silenced  the  katydids,  and  then  the  ride 
through  the  thunder  and  the  rain — 

"And  still  the  way  was  wondrous  with  the  flash  of  hill 

and  plain — 
The  stars  like  printed  asterisks — the  moon  a  murky 

stain." 

Eighty  breezy  miles — one  hour  as  the  aeroplane  flies, 
but  sixteen  for  the  "dazzling  speed"  of  the  sorrels. 

An  early  poem  dates  back  to  this  eighty-mile  run. 
The  sorrels  and  a  little  thread  of  gold  from  the  "En 
gineer"  (a  short  story  by  Mary  Hartwell  in  the  House 
hold  Magazine)  prompted  the  "Iron  Horse,"  the  poem 
which  subsequently  drew  a  note  of  praise  from  Long 
fellow.  "The  engineer  and  his  iron  horse  and  his  row 
of  baggage  cars  and  passenger  coaches  rushed  across 
the  land" — so  ran  the  hint  in  the  magazine.  Driving 
through  the  country  the  poet  bantered  the  Doctor  about 
his  sorrels,  challenging  him  to  rival  the  flaming  steed. 
"You  can  stir  up  the  dust,"  said  he,  "and  shoot  the 
rapids  at  the  toll-gates,  but  the  path  of  my  steed 

Spins  out  behind  him  like  a  thread 
Unravelled  from  the  reel  of  time." 

The  trip  to  St.  Mary's  River  furnished  suggestions 
for  other  poems,  not  that  Riley  then  wrote  them,  but 
the  incidents  were  tucked  away  in  memory  for  future 
use.  One  more  is  interesting  for  its  novelty.  When 
the  Doctor  was  detained  a  day  or  more  in  a  town,  the 


124  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

sign-painters  usually  became  acquainted  with  the 
young  folks,  particularly  if  they  were  musically  in 
clined.  Thus  Riley  seldom  went  to  the  next  town  with 
out  leaving  behind  him  a  merry  circle  to  praise  his 
music  on  the  guitar.  "One  evening  at  Decatur,"  said 
his  chum,  "Riley  was  foraging  about  from  place  to 
place  when  his  hungry  eyes  fell  upon  a  picture  that  lin 
gered  in  memory  years  after  other  events  of  the  even 
ing  had  faded.  Strange  how  a  little  piece  of  trimming 
like  that  will  cling  to  a  fellow.  The  old  town  was  mak 
ing  a  big  fuss  over  its  first  railroad,  and  there  was 
something  going  on  every  night.  There  were  music 
and  dancing.  We  played  games  and  told  fortunes. 
Among  the  visiting  friends  we  saw  at  a  party,  was  a 
gay  looking  girl  who  wore  a  Gainsborough  hat.  'See 
that  slender  figure  there/  said  Riley,  'with  a  hat  tilted 
up  like  a  butterfly's  wing?'  She  looked  beautiful  with 
a  little  knot  of  roses  in  her  hair."  When  the  sign- 
painters  learned  she  was  from  the  Queen  City,  they 
understood  why  her  dress  answered  the  requirements 
of  fashion.  "She  was  not  a  Duchess  of  Devonshire," 
said  Riley,  long  years  afterward,  "but  I  do  remember 
her  hat,  and  I  remember  too,  when  we  met  her  again 
the  next  day  that  the  sunny  locks  on  her  temples  looked 
like  a  Golden  Fleece."  Thus  the  poet  received  the  sug 
gestion  for  his  poem,  "The  Discouraging  Model." 

One  of  the  many  things  Riley  declined  to  do  was  to 
revisit  the  Mississinewa.  After  lumbermen  had  de 
stroyed  its  primeval  simplicity,  his  interest  in  the 
locality  vanished.  For  him  it  remained  the  wonder 
land  of  youth.  He  clung  with  loving  tenacity  to  the 
simple  beauty  and  pathos  of  days  that  were  no  more. 
Alma  Gluck  never  sang  of  them  more  sweetly  than  he 
remembered  them: 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY        125 

"Tell  me  the  tales  that  to  me  were  so  dear 
Long,  long  ago — long,  long  ago ; 
Sing  me  the  songs  I  delighted  to  hear, 
Long,  long  ago — L-o-r^g  A-g-o." 

Should  it  be  a  matter  of  surprise  that  this  disciple 
of  The  Days  Gone  By,  this  poet  who  saw  good  in  every 
thing,  should  write  of  things  as  he  did?  Considering 
the  wealth  of  his  experience  and  his  depth  of  insight 
the  marvel  is,  not  that  he  found  so  many  jewels  in  ob 
scurity,  so  many  diamonds  in  the  dust,  but  that  he 
did  not  find  more.  Before  he  could  write  about  things 
he  had  to  live  them.  In  Whitman  phrase,  he  had  to 
absorb  his  country  affectionately  before  the  people 
would  absorb  him.  To  him  his  native  state  was  the 
fairest  picture  in  Columbia's  gallery.  He  saw 

"Within  the  forest  gloom 

His  Indiana  burst  in  bloom — • 
A  broad  expanse  of  fair  and  fertile  land, 
Like  some  rich  landscape  from  the  master's  hand." 

He  saw  the  polar  frost  on  the  "punkin"  and  the  clover ; 
he  was  driven  against  the  blinding  flakes  of  the  snow 
storm.  Like  the  birds  he  dined  out-of-doors.  He 
ranged  untraveled  fields.  Once  more,  nature — 

"Choosing  sweet  clay  from  the  breast 
Of  the  unexhausted  West" — 

was  making  a  man  by  breaking  away  from  worn-out 
plans.  She  was  not  shaping  a  President,  not  a  shep 
herd  of  mankind,  but  a  Poet  of  mankind,  a  voice  to 
sing  of  a  President  and  his  Silent  Victors,  a  heart  to 
lure  lyrics  and  ballads  from  the  great  symphony  that 
lay  untouched  around  him. 

A  famous  son  of  Harvard,  Joseph  H.  Choate,  is  on 
record  as  saying  that  "Mark  Twain  learned  more  from 


126  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

his  post-graduate  days  as  a  river  pilot  on  the  Missis 
sippi  than  he  could  have  got  from  a  course  at  Harvard" 
— Choate's  interesting  way  of  saying  that  there  are 
other  universities  besides  halls  of  learning.  Facts  such 
as  these  we  are  to  remember  as  Riley  bowls  through 
the  counties  and  towns  of  Indiana  and  western  Ohio. 

In  the  winter  season  the  Doctor  confined  his  "Rem 
edy"  sales  to  points  nearer  the  Hub.  Time  was  chiefly 
given  to  work  in  the  office  and  laboratory.  Most  of 
the  time  the  sign-painters  had  to  shift  for  themselves, 
and  a  thriftless  piece  of  shifting  it  was  for  the  "Painter 
Poet."  While  board,  lodging  and  expenses  were  paid 
by  the  Doctor,  all  went  merrily  enough.  Paying 
his  own  expenses  was  different.  The  art  of  writ 
ing  verse  was  a  gift  and  he  was  never  happier  than 
when  exercising  it,  but  the  art  of  making  money  was 
foreign  to  him.  "This  thing  of  making  odds  and  ends 
meet,"  said  he,  "who  but  the  devil  can  understand 
that."  All  of  which  accords  with  a  bit  of  ancient  phi 
losophy,  that  we  all  are  working  together  to  one  end, 
farmers,  merchants  and  poets,  some  with  knowledge 
and  design,  and  others  without  knowing  what  they  do. 

As  the  weeks  passed,  the  old  story-and-a-half  board 
ing  house,  corner  Jackson  and  Bolivar  Streets,  at  which 
Riley  was  at  intervals  to  go  in  and  out  for  the  next 
five  years,  became  a  lively  spot.  When  there  was  a 
dollar  to  pay  the  board  bill,  he  was  jovial.  There  was 
music  on  the  guitar;  the  world  was  agog  with  merri 
ment.  When  his  purse  was  empty  the  bills  were  un 
paid — tradition  says  some  were  never  paid.  He  man 
aged  however  to  be  always  on  good  terms  with  the 
landlady.  "Your  board  bill,"  she  would  remind  him. 
"Yes,  yes,"  he  would  smile,  "I  must  pay  that  bill"— 
and  thus  gaily  the  delay  went  on  to  the  end  of  another 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY        127 

week,  the  landlady  as  happy  in  waiting  for  her  money 
as  he  was  uncomfortable  in  his  inability  to  pay  it. 
He  was  always  rhyming;  at  the  dinner  table  there 
was  "catapeller"  for  saltcellar,  "pig-jowl"  for  sugar 
bowl,  and  so  forth.  According  to  the  landlady,  Mrs. 
H.  E.  Whitmore,  he  gave  "a  world  of  attention  to  dress 
— provided/'  she  said,  "some  one  would  furnish  the 
clothing.  He  did  not  wear  glasses,  but  believe  me,  he 
wore  a  mustache,  a  long,  jaunty  one  which  he  was 
always  curling."  The  poor  little  waif  of  a  mustache 
(according  to  its  owner)  was  just  two  years  old.  He 
shuddered  when  he  passed  a  barber  shop  lest  by  some 
strange  ungovernable  impulse  he  should  be  constrained 
to  enter  it  and  sacrifice  the  waif  for  the  relief  of  his 
friends. 

One  snowy  day  he  went  into  the  kitchen  with  a 
"blacksnake"  whip  in  his  hand.  (He  had  found  it  in  the 
street.)  "Won!"  he  shouted,  impersonating  a  farmer 
who  had  a  load  of  wood  to  sell.  "Woh,  there !  you  bare- 
boned  broadsides,  didn't  ye  have  no  fodder  fer  break 
fast?  Madam,"  addressing  the  landlady,  "I  must  sell 
some  wood.  My  board  bill  is  three  weeks  overdue; 
sell  it  I  must  or  be  sued  for  debt.  What  kind  did  you 
say?  Well,  mostly  beech,  sugar  and  elm — water-elm, 
Madam,  will  make  a  fire  hot  'nough  to  roast  bear. 
How  old  air  you,  little  girl?"  addressing  a  daughter. 
"W'y,  child,  not  twelve  ?  Like  apples  ?  No  ?  Hickory 
nuts?  There's  a  wagon  load  on  my  farm.  Woh!" 
It  took  but  a  few  moments  for  interest  to  rise  to  a  fever 
pitch.  The  oven  waxed  hot  and  scorched  the  pie  crust. 
Coffee  bubbles  ran  over  the  brim  and  danced  on  the 
stove  lid,  while  mother  and  daughter  sank  into  their 
chairs  in  sheer  exhaustion  from  laughter.  Thus  genius 
paid  a  board  bill. 


128  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Other  echoes  came  from  the  boarding  house.  Riley 
wrote  and  bound  a  book  in  the  kitchen,  a  little  book  of 
tea  leaves,  to  which  he  gave  the  title,  "Nursery  Rhymes 
for  Children."  His  chum  loaned  it  about  until  it  was 
worn  to  a  frazzle  and  the  rhymes  lost.  Friends  referred 
to  it  as  his  first  book.  An  incident,  more  particularly 
for  those  interested  in  the  poet's  public  readings,  was 
the  coming  to  the  dining-room  one  week  of  an  "educa 
tionist,"  who  had  been  engaged  to  do  institute  work  for 
the  Madison  County  teachers.  He  was  abnormally 
affected  and  never  lost  an  opportunity  to  dilate  on  his 
favorite  topic — the  object  lesson.  "Butter  plates  and 
teaspoons,"  said  he  primly,  "are  charming  illustra 
tions." 

"A  peanut,  I  suppose,"  said  Riley  across  the  table, 
"would  detract  from  the  dignity  and  profundity  of 
the  subject." 

"Quite  the  contrary,"  was  the  return,  "super-excel 
lent,  a  very  clever  suggestion." 

A  few  weeks  after,  Riley  entertained  a  company  of 
friends  at  a  private  house.  Among  his  quaint  selec 
tions  was  "The  Object  Lesson,"  by  no  means  the 
unrivaled  specimen  of  humor  it  was  afterward,  but  the 
beginning. 

January,  1873,  found  Riley  in  Grant  County,  attract 
ing  the  attention  of  farmers,  with  signs  on  barnsides ; 
one,  a  huge  boot  and  shoe  and  a  colossal  figure  4  with  a 
picture  of  a  man  by  it,  advertising  the  Foreman  Com 
pany.  There  were  at  the  roadsides,  too,  funny  signs 
in  rhyme  for  merry-makers,  such  as 

Arnold  &  Gunder 
For  Dry  Goods  by  Thunder. 

That  he  was  not  financially  successful  was  recorded 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY        129 

in  the  Doctor's  daybook.  He  had  not  enough  money  to 
attend  the  theater.  The  Doctor  bought  the  tickets  for 
Humpty  Dumpty.  "The  play,"  said  he,  "was  a  fail 
ure  but  Riley's  comments  on  it  were  worth  more  than 
the  price  of  admission."  The  Doctor  had  advanced 
money  and  merchandise  for  the  sign-painting  venture, 
and  the  result  was  somewhat  discouraging,  as  seen  in 
the  following  table: 

J.  W.  Riley,  Dr. 
1873 

Jan.     8.  To  Cash   (at  Marion) $  3.00 

Jan.  18.  To  Cash  (for  paint) 1.00 

Jan.  24.  To  Cash  (for  paint) 1.00 

Jan.  24.  To  white  lead 1.00 

Jan.  31.  To  order  on  Baums 3.00 

Jan.  31.  To  Cash 1.00 

Feb.    1.  To  Cash 3.00 

Feb.  10.  To  Cash .35 

Feb.  14.  To  Handkerchief   .40 

Feb.  15.  To  Cash 5.00 

Feb.  20.  To  Shirt  (borrowed) 1.50 

$20.25 

J.  W.  Riley,  Cr. 
1873  Jan.  and  Feb. 
By  painting 

By  Do  60  Boards $  6.00 

By  Do  10  Boards 2.00 

By  Do  2  doz.  tin  signs 6.00 

By  Do  sign  over  door 1.00 


$15.00 
To  Dead  Loss 5.25 

$20.25 


130  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"The  above,"  so  the  Doctor  wrote  in  his  diary  years 
after,  "is  James  Whitcomb  Riley,  the  Hoosier  Poet  of 
Indiana."  The  "Painter  Poet"  was  a  dead  loss  in  the 
sign-painting  venture,  but  when,  a  decade  later,  he 
began  to  gather  sheaves  from  the  field  of  renown,  when 
the  Doctor  read  his  poem  "Fame,"  the  loss  of  $5.25 
was  a  trifle  quite  beneath  notice. 

The  "Hoosier  Poet"  borrowed  a  shirt  for  a  return 
trip  to  Greenfield,  his  first  lengthy  visit  home  since 
the  afternoon  in  June 

"he  went  rolling  away 

To  the  pea-green  groves  on  the  coast  of  day." 

"James  W.  Riley"  (so  ran  the  local  in  the  Greenfield 
Democrat,  February,  1873)  "put  in  his  appearance  on 
Saturday  last.  He  looks  well."  He  should  look  well. 
He  had  traveled  from  side  to  side  of  his  native  state. 
The  excursions  had  taken  the  curves  and  kinks  out  of 
his  routine  existence.  He  had  health.  Whoever  rode 
with  Doctor  McCrillus  returned  robust  and  vigorous. 
The  sorrels  and  the  high  seat  on  the  "Buckeye"  had 
worked  the  miracle,  although  the  Doctor  attributed  the 
cure  to  "European  Balsam." 

In  his  latter  years  Riley  was  silent  about  his  youth 
ful  wanderings,  yet  he  never  ceased  to  remember  them 
with  pleasure.  He  was  so  grateful  that  he  once  gave 
the  Doctor  a  "lift"  in  rhyme.  Let  no  critic  fancy  he 
thought  of  the  jingle  as  poetry.  The  season  it  saw  the 
light  was  his  playtime.  He  was  playing  with  rhymes 
as  a  boy  plays  with  quoits  or  marbles : 

"Wherever  blooms  of  health  are  blown, 
McCrillus  Remedies  are  known; 
Wherever  happy  lives  are  found 
You'll  find  his  medicines  around; 


OVER  THE  HILLS  AND  FAR  AWAY        131 

From  coughs  and  colds  and  lung  disease, 

His  patients  find  a  sweet  release. 

His  Oriental  Liniment 

Is  known  to  fame  to  such  extent 

That  orders  for  it  emanate 

From  every  portion  of  the  State ; 

His  European  Balsam,  too, 

Sends  blessings  down  to  me  and  you ; 

And  holds  its  throne  from  year  to  year 

In  every  household  far  and  near. 

His  Purifier  for  the  Blood 

Has  earned  a  name  as  fair  and  good 

As  ever  glistened  on  the  page 

Of  any  annals  of  the  age, 

And  he  who  pants  for  health  and  ease 

Should  try  these  Standard  Remedies." 


CHAPTER  VI 
WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY 

AS  ALREADY  intimated,  the  Argonaut  did  not 
work  exclusively  for  the  "Standard  Remedy" 
vender.  He  and  his  chum  sought  success  in 
other  sign-painting  fields.  When  voyaging  alone  they 
were  terribly  tormented,  like  the  Argonauts  of  ancient 
time,  with  troublesome  birds.  The  ugly  harpies,  Debt 
and  Failure,  came  to  snatch  away  their  dinner  and 
hamper  their  pursuit  of  the  Golden  Fleece. 

They  formed  a  partnership,  the  Riley  &  McClana- 
han  Advertising  Company,  and  made  known  their  pur 
pose  on  cards  which  they  distributed  in  the  towns: 
"ADVERTISE  WITH  PAINT  ON  BARNS  AND  FENCES — 
THAT'S  THE  WAY/'  Subsequently  the  firm  was  ex 
panded,  three  or  four  partners  being  taken  in,  and 
the  name  changed  to  The  Graphic  Company,  so  called 
from  the  New  York  Graphic,  then  popular  with  de 
signers.  The  company  went  through  the  country 
painting  signs  for  clothing  firms  and  other  enterpris 
ing  establishments. 

One  summer  morning  Riley  was  working  alone,  his 
chum  having  gone  a  short  distance  away  to  paint  at 
the  roadside.  He  felicitated  himself  on  his  good  luck. 
The  haze  was  purpling  the  horizon  wall.  The  Ken 
tucky  warbler  in  the  "sugar  orchard"  near  by  sang  as 
sweetly  as  he  ever  sang  for  Audubon.  Even  the  barn 
yard  fowls  were  tuneful.  To  perfect  the  picture,  chil 
dren  stood  by  gazing  in  wide-eyed  bewilderment  at  the 

132 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          133 

sign  as  it  took  shape  on  the  barnside.  The  sign  was  a 
large  one  and  the  barn  on  which  he  was  painting  it, 
exceptionally  well  located  about  a  mile  from  town.  He 
was  giving  his  faculties  free  reign  and  had  the  work 
about  half  done,  being  overjoyed  at  the  success  of  it, 
when  a  man  on  horseback  called  to  him  from  the  road : 
"Hello,  there!  you  man  on  the  ladder!"  Riley  looked 
round  and  waited  a  moment  for  a  further  bit  of  infor 
mation. 

"Get  down  from  that  ladder." 

"Why?" 

"Who  told  you  to  paint  there?" 

"The  people  who  live  here." 

"Well,  the  people  who  live  here  rent  this  farm  from 
me.  Down  from  that  ladder  and  be  quick  about  it,  too." 

He  who  gave  the  order  was  a  big  man  on  any  oc 
casion,  but  that  morning,  after  he  had  dismounted, 
he  stood  there  like  a  certain  pen  portrait  of  Julius 
Ceesar — "eighteen  feet  high  in  his  sandals."  Riley 
remembered  that  the  giant  accompanied  the  order  with 
an  oath.  "It  was  the  oath,"  said  he,  "that  brought  me 
so  suddenly  down  the  ladder.  I  ran  like  a  reindeer 
across  the  field." 

On  reaching  his  chum,  all  was  flutter  and  misgiving. 
"What  now?"  asked  the  chum. 

"Torn  limb  from  jacket,"  returned  Riley.  "Fly! 
cleave  the  sky! — and  the  devil  take  the  hindmost." 

They  drove  hurriedly  away,  and  when  they  dis 
covered  they  were  not  pursued,  Riley  became  calm  and 
related  in  detail  his  harrowing  experience. 

The  sequel  is  likewise  interesting.  Ten  years  later, 
after  he  had  published  his  first  book,  after,  as  he  re 
marked,  he  had  "pulled  the  joints  out  of  his  name"  so 
that  he  was  James  Whitcomb  instead  of  J.  W.  Riley,  he 


134  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

returned  to  the  old  town  in  Grant  County  to  give  a 
public  reading.  He  was  the  guest  at  a  dinner  in  his 
honor.  As  the  hours  wore  away,  he  noticed  the  host 
eying  him  sharply.  Later  in  the  evening,  after  the 
ladies  had  retired,  his  host  said,  "Mr.  Riley,  it  seems 
to  me  I  have  seen  you  before;  I  can  not  remember 
where ;  perhaps  it  is  my  imagination,  but  I  can  not  get 
it  out  of  my  mind  that  I  have  met  you  somewhere." 

Now  the  poet  was  an  adept  in  remembering  faces, 
"Well,"  he  replied,  "out  here  a  mile  away — I  do  not 
remember  on  which  road — there  is  a  barn.  Once  there 
was  a  fellow  who  started  to  paint  a  sign  on  it  and  a 
man  from  town — " 

"Are  you  the  fellow — my  God !  You  are  the  man  I 
ordered  down  that  ladder."  The  confusion  of  the 
host  is  readily  imagined  and  further  comment  use 
less  except  to  add  that  they  were  fast  friends  there 
after.  The  sign  at  the  time  was  still  unfinished. 

The  unfinished  sign  precipitated  other  woes.  The 
"Advertising  Company"  had  no  money.  They  had  to 
replenish  their  treasury  or  go  to  the  wall.  Paint  tubes 
and  glass  for  fancy  work  required  cash.  In  their  ex 
tremity  they  concluded  to  try  Howard  County,  and 
after  doing  what  seemed  "a  flourishing  business"  in 
comparison  with  previous  losses,  they  rattled  across 
country  in  an  old  "quailtrap"  to  Peru.  As  they  ap 
proached  the  county-seat  on  the  Wabash,  Riley 
"sparkled"  with  memories  of  an  old  book  he  had  read. 
He  rallied  his  partner,  half-seriously,  about  the  Con 
quest  of  Peru.  The  royal  gardens  were  in  Peru,  glit 
tering  with  flowers  of  silver — and  there  were  the 
llamas  with  the  Golden  Fleece.  He  and  his  chum  were 
Spaniards  going  to  plunder  the  Peruvian  temples, 
chiefly  that  one  in  the  heart  of  the  city  known  as  "The 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          135 

Palace  of  Gold."  They  would  sack  the  town  and  take 
it  but  they  would  not  do  it  by  appealing  to  arms. 
"Gold,"  said  Riley,  using  the  figurative  language  of  the 
Incas,  "is  the  tears  wept  by  the  sun — and  we  may  have 
to  weep  for  it.  Joy  or  sorrow,  we  must  have  it." 

Entering  the  town,  the  "Spaniards"  decided  to  draw 
first  on  the  heartstrings  of  the  Peruvians  hoping  there 
by  to  loosen  their  purse-strings.  Just  for  the  mischief 
of  it,  Riley  rubbed  soap  under  his  eyes,  assumed  a 
mournful  look  and  was  led  into  the  hotel  as  a  blind 
sign-painter.  Seating  himself  in  the  office,  his  chum 
went  out  in  search  of  work.  He  soon  found  it  and 
drew  up  a  contract  for  a  large  sign  on  the  front  of  a 
livery  stable,  the  work  to  be  done  the  following  day  by 
his  "blind  partner."  Returning  to  the  hotel  he  dis 
covered  a  circle  of  curious  folks  around  Riley,  requir 
ing,  on  the  part  of  the  "Advertising  Company,"  the 
utmost  exercise  of  self-control.  Many  were  sympa 
thizing  with  the  "blind  man"  and  a  few  were  skeptical. 
The  confusion  and  uncertainty  continued  at  the  supper 
table.  The  "helpless"  man  spilled  gravy  on  the  table 
cloth  while  his  chum  indicated  where  the  dishes  were. 
As  the  meal  proceeded,  the  waiter  grew  more  curious 
and  the  guests  more  sympathetic.  Riley  upset  his 
coffee  with  a  trembling  hand  and  at  the  same  instant 
dropped  a  saltcellar  on  the  floor.  "Look  at  you!" 
remonstrated  his  chum,  sharply ;  "now  we'll  have  a  bill 
for  damages!" 

Being  "weary,"  as  they  said,  "from  a  long  day's 
journey,"  they  retired  early.  The  truth  was  they  had 
to  screen  the  transom  with  newspaper  and  lock  them 
selves  in  their  room  so  that  their  explosions  of  laughter 
would  not  be  detected. 

After  breakfast  Riley  was  led  down  the  street  to  the 


136  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

livery  barn.  The  crowd  was  not  long  gathering,  rumor 
of  the  blind  sign-painter  having  spread  during  the 
night  from  Canal  Street  to  the  Cemetery.  The  space 
for  the  sign  was  high  above  the  double-door  entrance, 
and  ample.  Riley  was  stationed  on  the  sidewalk  and  told 
not  to  move  till  the  ladder  was  hoisted.  With  a  paint 
bucket  "hinged"  to  his  side,  he  stepped  falteringly  to 
the  first  round  and  climbed  clumsily  to  the  top.  He 
lifted  his  brush :  "A  little  more  to  the  left,"  said  his 
chum  from  the  street  below — "watch  your  balance — 
higher — a  little  higher — there,  that  will  do — proceed." 

When  ascending  and  descending  the  ladder  as  he  had 
to  do  several  times,  Riley  would  "slip"  a  round  and 
once  he  spilled  his  paint.  "It  was  great  fun,"  said  he, 
"to  hear  the  crowd  talking ;  the  skeptics  and  believers 
were  about  equally  divided." 

"That  fellow  ain't  blind." 

"Yes,  he  is ;  see  his  eyes." 

"No,  he  ain't,  I  tell  you;  he's  playin'  off!" 

"I  tell  you  he's  blind ;  didn't  you  see  him  fall  off  the 
ladder  and  spill  his  paint?" 

"Meln  Gott!"  exclaimed  a  Dutchman  when  Riley 
slipped  on  the  ladder;  "I  wouldn't  be  up  dere  for  a 
coon's  age!" 

The  work  was  completed  in  the  afternoon.  The 
crowd  dispersed,  and  the  "blind  partner"  was  re 
turned  to  the  hotel  where  the  "Advertising  Company" 
retired  to  its  room  for  more  explosions  of  laughter. 
What  the  crowd  had  witnessed  was,  in  its  way,  as  magi 
cal  and  unexplainable  as  was  the  work  of  Phidias  to 
the  artless  Greeks.  It  should  be  remembered  that  the 
"Painter  Poet"  was  an  actor.  The  "performance"  he 
gave  that  day  was  something  more  than  a  series  of 
contortions  or  unnatural  posturings.  He  succeeded  as 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          137 

well  as  he  did  with  the  "Leonainie  Hoax"  five  years 
later,  or  even  better. 

The  next  day  Riley  eluded  the  public  and  strolled  up 
and  down  the  river,  while  his  chum  secured  contracts. 
After  his  "introductory"  to  the  merchants,  the  chum 
had  but  to  show  them  the  sign  on  the  livery  barn  to 
clinch  an  agreement  immediately.  Seasons  of  pros 
perity  dated  from  that  day,  although  most  of  them 
vanished  with  the  rapidity  with  which  they  arrived. 
The  Peruvians  had  been  conquered.  They  gave  their 
gold  ungrudgingly.  They  were  happy,  most  of  all  that 
sight  had  been  restored  to  the  "blind  sign-painter" — • 
glad  to  the  core  that  they  had  been  so  "deliciously  hum 
bugged."  "Those  Spaniards,"  so  a  citizen  said,  "were 
bundles  of  electricity,  the  queerest,  brightest,  cleverest 
fellows  that  ever  climbed  over  the  Peruvian  wall." 

Although  the  blind  sign-painter  ruse  was  not  re 
peated  in  other  towns,  the  Peruvian  method  of  secur 
ing  business  became  more  serviceable  every  day.  It 
was  a  proposal  that  business  men  advertise  their  shops, 
stores  and  factories  in  the  manner  that  had  hitherto 
been  monopolized  by  the  patent  medicine  men.  "That 
chum  of  mine,"  said  Riley,  "was  a  great  chap.  I  fairly 
worshiped'  him  because  he  was  so  successful  and  he 
worshiped  me  because  I  could  da  the  work  after  he 
had  secured  the  business,"  In  selecting  their  victims, 
they  looked  over  the  county  paper  for  the*  most  enter 
prising  dry-goods  man.  Then  the  solicitor  "turned  on 
the  current  and  there  was  music  in  the  air  for  many 
days."  Sometimes,  for  diversion,  he  worked  under  an 
assumed  name.  "Evidently,"  he  would  say  to  a  mer 
chant,  "you  are  the  most  wide-awake  man  in  this  town. 
We  have  been  painting  advertisements  on  barns  and 
fences  for  a  medicine  firm.  We  know  that  such  ad- 


138  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

vertising  is  the  most  remunerative  in  the  world.  Once 
paid  for,  it  lasts  for  years.  Now  there  are  eight  roads 
leading  out  of  this  town.  We  will  'paint*  you  along 
these  roads  for  three  miles  out" — for  so  much  money. 

The  merchant  usually  "squealed"  at  the  price.  Then 
the  solicitor  drew  the  county  paper  from  his  pocket. 
"You  are  paying  the  editor  so  much  here  per  inch  and 
he  advertises  your  competitor  on  the  same  page.  Now 
we  do  not  take  your  rival.  We  handle  one  man  in  one 
line  only.  By  closing  a  contract  with  us  you  monopolize 
the  eight  roads.  If  you  do  not  want  it  we  will  try  your 
competitor."  The  solicitor  seldom  failed  to  "bag  the 
game."  He  also  succeeded  with  the  farmers.  When 
desiring  space  for  a  display  on  their  barns,  he  had  a 
way  of  admiring  their  horses  and  cattle.  Sometimes 
he  would  present  the  wife  with  a  dress  pattern  that  was 
"very  fetching." 

When  paid  for  their  work  the  Company  trod  on  air. 
They  spent  their  money  freely,  and  often  became 
the  prey  of  sharpers.  As  Riley  said,  they  "were  jay- 
hawked  and  soon  compelled  to  embark  again  on  the 
broad  deep — penniless,  destitute  of  necessities  for 
the  voyage."  If  at  such  a  season  the  weather  became 
inclement,  old  gaunt  Starvation  threatened  to  accom 
pany  them.  They  waited  "with  anxious  hearts  the 
dubious  fate  of  to-morrow."  Once,  in  the  Land  of  the 
Delawares  (Delaware  County),  the  days  were  invari 
ably  dreary.  "It  was  mizzle  and  drizzle,"  said  Riley ; 
"the  week  was  peevish  and  fretful  as  a  baby  cutting 
teeth."  And  then  he  broke  into  rhyme: 

"Rain,  rain,  go  away, 
Come  again  some  other  day; 
The  doughty  'Spaniards'  want  to  play 
In  the  meadows  on  the  hay." 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          139 

When  the  tardy  sunshine  did  finally  dawn,  they 
"bounced  from  bed  glad  as  boys  who  hear  the  first  gun 
the  Fourth  of  July."  Borrowing  a  horse  and  buggy, 
and  engaging  to  share  their  gross  receipts  with  a 
big-hearted  stranger  who  furnished  the  white  lead  and 
backed  them  for  board  and  lodging  at  the  hotel,  they 
went  forth  conquering  and  to  conquer.  The  whole 
region  round  the  county-seat  was  ticketed  with  signs 
and  couplets.  "Merchants,  not  farmers,"  they  were 
wont  to  say,  "were  the  salvation  of  the  land.  What 
could  plowmen  do  without  the  implement  store  ?  How 
could  their  daughters  be  happy  without  millinery  estab 
lishments  ?  How  .could  gooseberries  be  sweetened  with 
out  sugar?  How  could  children  be  educated  without 
the  bookstore?"  By  such  clever  tactics,  losses  were 
retrieved. 

Riley  was  invariably  congratulating  himself  on 
"hairbreadth  escapes  from  Old  Starvation."  One  day 
especially  set  apart  for  thanksgiving  he,  with  other 
members  of  the  Graphic  Company,  was  celebrating  his 
release  with  some  fishermen  on  White  River  near  "Mun- 
cie  Town."  Not  far  away  were  landmarks  of  Red  Men. 
It  was  a  romantic  spot.  "There,"  wrote  Riley,  "the 
catfish  winks  his  nimbly  fins, 

There  all  day  long  the  bullfrog  cheeps, 
And  yawns  and  gapes  and  nods  and  sleeps; 
There  the  woodland  rooster  crows, 
And  no  one  knows  what  the  pullet  knows." 

The  fishermen  were  near  a  huge  elm,  whose  trunk 
inclined  horizontally  across  the  stream.  Toward  noon 
Riley  stole  silently  away  to  a  farm-house  for  refresh 
ments,  leaving  his  friends  to  wonder  what  had  become 
of  him.  An  hour  later  he  "mysteriously"  stood  on  the 


140  JAMES  WHITCOMB  PJLEY 

trunk  of  the  tree  over  the  river  with  a  pail  of  milk  in 
one  hand  and  a  pie  in  the  other.  Old  Starvation  had 
been  vanquished.  "I  appeal  to  any  white  man," 
he  began  gravely,  the  fishermen  looking  up  in  surprise 
and  glee — "I  appeal  to  any  white  man  to  say  that  ever 
he  entered  Logan's  cabin  hungry  and  he  gave  him  not 
meat ;  that  ever  he  came  cold  and  naked  and  he  clothed 
him  not.  For  my  country  I  rejoice  at  the  beams  of 
peace.  But  do  not  harbor  the  thought  that  mine  is  a 
joy  of  fear.  Logan  never  felt  fear.  He  will  not  turn 
on  his  heel  to  save  his  life.  Who  is  there  to  mourn 
for  Logan  ?  Not  one !" 

"Hail  to  the  Chief,"  shouted  his  chum  from  the  river 
bank.  The  fishermen  joined  in  the  applause  but  the 
Chief  seemed  not  to  hear  them.  All  afternoon  he  lis 
tened  to  other  voices.  His  heart  was  a  harp  in  the 
wind.  The  very  trees  "lifted  up  their  leaves  to  shake 
hands  with  the  breeze."  Rhymes  rippled  on  as  mer 
rily  as  the  stream  over  the  pebbles.  "For  a  week," 
said  his  chum,  "it  was  as  easy  to  paint  and  jingle  as 
it  was  for  birds  to  carol."  Signs  ran  to  rhyme : 

"Sing  for  the  Oak  Tree, 
The  monarch  of  the  woods: 
Sing  for  the  L— M  Trees 
The  dealer  in  dry  goods." 

Pegasus  even  bantered  him  to  ride  when  passing  a 
spot  so  unlyrical  as  a  harness  shop: 

"Saddles  and  harness !    O  musical  words, 
That  ring  in  our  ears  like  the  song  of  the  birds ! 
But  give  to  Pegasus  a  saddle  from  there, 
And  a  poet  astride,  and  we  venture  to  swear 
That  the  steed  will  soar  up  like  a  vulture  and  sing 
To  the  clouds  in  the  sky  without  flopping  a  wing." 

"I  am  so  happy,"  Riley  remarked,  "I  can  hear  the 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          141 

corn  and  melons  growing.^  I  could  climb  a  sycamore." 
His  chum,  however,  the  Graphic  Chum,  as  the  reader 
henceforth  shall  know  him,  had  occasion  for  disap 
pointment.  For  once  he  had  failed  as  a  solicitor.  A 
farmer  with  a  keener  sense  of  the  beautiful  than  his 
neighbors  refused  to  have  his  new  barn  blemished  with 
a  sign.  It  was  a  conspicuous  site — "could  be  seen,"  it 
was  said,  "from  Pipe  Creek  to  Kill  Buck."  The  usual 
"bribes"  offered  the  wife,  such  as  a  chromo  or  a  set  of 
dishes  or  a  calico  dress,  proved  futile.  The  chum 
painted  his  regret  in  a  couplet  at  the  roadside : 

"Of  all  sad  words  of  tongue  or  pen 
The  saddest  are  these,  It  might  have  been," 

Riley  promptly  following  with, 

"More  sad  are  these  we  daily  see: 
It  is,  but  hadn't  ought  to  be," 

both  couplets  terminating  in  a  parody,  which  Riley 
wrote  with  apologies  to  Whittier,  and  subsequently 
printed  in  a  county  paper,  beginning  with, 

"Maud  Muller  worked  at  making  hay, 
And  cleared  her  forty  cents  a  day." 

The  failure  to  disfigure  the  barn  had  but  a  momen 
tary  effect  on  Riley's  buoyant  spirit.  All  was  sun 
shine  and  love  as  he  passed,  as  is  evidenced  by  his  re 
flections  in  the  early  morning  on  looking  out  from  a 
window  over  a  new  town  which  he  had  entered  the 
night  before. 

"How  pleasant  it  all  was,"  he  wrote,  "how  fresh, 
how  clearly  defined  and  beautiful — a  picture  from  Na 
ture's  hand  framed  in  a  halo  of  golden  light — the 
broad  streets,  and  the  houses  with  their  cleanly  washed 
faces  crowding  together,  'toeing  the  mark'  in  proper 


142  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

order,  eager  for  the  business  before  them;  and  the 
voice  of  the  milkman  below,  a  cheery  woman's  voice 
in  response,  mingled  with  the  bow-wow  of  a  dog  and 
the  vague,  startled  exclamation  of  a  rooster  that  went 
to  scratching  up  the  dirt  livelier  than  ever,  carrying  on 
an  undertone  of  conversation  with  a  half  dozen  pullets. 
And  then  the  far-off  sound  of  an  early  train  whose 
whistle  pierced  the  thin  air  for  miles  and  brought 
recollections  of  the  hum  of  busy  wheels  and  multitudes 
astir  in  the  city  far  away.  The  birds  in  the  woods 
across  the  common  were  never  so  glad  before,  never  in 
such  splendid  tune.  They  breakfasted  on  music.  They 
seemed  to  be  too  full  of  joy  to  have  an  appetite  for 
bugs." 

Although  from  Peru  onward  it  was  up  hill  and  down 
dale,  yet  on  the  whole  there  was  an  increase  of  busi 
ness,  particularly  after  the  Argonaut  and  his  asso 
ciates  were  advertised  as  the  Graphic  Company.  An 
derson  was  the  hub  of  their  wanderings,  as  it  had 
been  for  the  "Standard  Remedy"  vendings.  The 
"Graphics"  voyaged  with  the  current.  They  were 

"Dragon  flies  that  come  and  go, 
Veer  and  eddy,  float  and  flow, 
Back  and  forth  and  to  and  fro, 
As  the  bubbles  go" — 

cne  month,  north  to  Kendallville ;  another,  west  to 
Crawf ordsville ;  cne  week,  out  to  Hagerstown ;  the  next, 
down  to  Knightstown. 

Riley  had  a  prosperous  season  at  South  Bend  the 
fall  of  1873.  "I  have  been  flourishing  in  the  Stude- 
baker  settlement,"  he  remarked  on  returning  from  the 
town.  "I  ranked  high  with  the  South  Benders."  At 
first  he  worked  with  a  member  of  the  Graphic  Com 
pany.  Later  he  was  employed  a  few  weeks  by  a  local 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          143 

house  (Stockford  &  Blowney)  and  turned  out,  accord 
ing  to  his  employers,  some  of  the  most  original  work"  in 
the  state,  "the  best  west  of  New  York,"  said  they,  "and 
second  to  none  in  Chicago."  One  week  inside  the 
shop  he  enjoyed  "the  glare  and  glitter  of  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars7  worth  of  sign  work."  One 
of  his  designs  made  a  decided  hit.  Its  dimensions  were 
astounding.  For  once  he  had  ample  room  for  the  exer 
cise  of  his  inventive  faculty.  It  was  a  series  of  pic 
tures  apparently  in  one — "The  Contrast  of  Forty 
Years" — South  Bend  in  1833  when  a  few  log  cabins 
stood  on  the  River  St.  Joe,  and  South  Bend,  the 
prosperous  city  of  1873.  Over  against  the  pioneer 
surrounded  by  the  crude  implements  of  his  time, 
stood  the  man  of  fortune  surrounded  by  modern 
conveniences.  Left  and  right  respectively,  were 
an  ox  cart  and  a  Studebaker  wagon ;  a  bear  and  a  fat 
cow;  a  fur  trading  post  surrounded  by  Indians  and  a 
commercial  emporium  surrounded  by  pleased  cus 
tomers  ;  a  well-sweep  and  a  gushing  fountain ;  a  judge 
holding  court  in  a  shanty  by  the  river  and  a  modern 
stone  court  house ;  a  flatboat  and  a  steamboat ;  a  board 
ing  house  and  a  big  hotel;  a  prairie  swamp  and  a 
Brussels  carpet;  a  stump  and  a  cushioned  rocking 
chair;  an  ax  and  a  gold-headed  cane;  the  log  hut  and 
the  palace ;  a  family  with  no  news  at  all  and  one  with 
books  and  the  daily  paper.  "It  was  gigantic,"  said 
Riley.  "South  Benders  were  surprised  to  learn  of  their 
crude  beginning.  It  took  two  men  a  week  to  paint  it." 
At  South  Bend  there  also  were  rounds  of  social  en 
joyment  and  participation  in  musical  programs.  There 
he  heard  Bret  Harte,  who  had  been  an  inspiration  to 
him  since  the  days  he  read  him  in  the  woods  with  the 
Schoolmaster.  The  lecture  renewed  his  interest  in  the 


144  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Argonauts.  His  twenty-fourth  birthday  had  just 
glided  by.  After  it,  he  was  particularly  happy  when 
the  Graphic  Chum  or  any  other  member  of  the  Com 
pany  referred  to  him  as  the  Forty-Niner  in  quest  of 
the  Golden  Fleece. 

As  the  seasons  passed,  the  "Graphics"  grew  more 
spectacular.  They  were  a  band  of  roving,  roistering 
fellows,  all  young  men  filled  with  a  desire  to  see  the 
world.  Like  Washington  Irving  when  drifting  about 
Europe,  all  they  wished  was  a  little  annual  certainty 
wherewith  to  buy  bread  and  cheese — "they  could  trust 
to  fortune  for  the  oil  and  the  wine."  The  chief  end 
of  their  wanderings  was  amusement.  Riley  was  a  kind 
of  prince  among  them. 

"To  hear  him  snap  the  trigger 
Of  a  pun,  or  crack  a  joke, 
Would  make  them  laugh  and  snigger 
Till  every  button  broke." 

His  regalia  was  a  thing  to  remember.  "I  wore  for  eve 
ning  dress,"  said  he,  "a  tall  white  hat,  a  pair  of  speckled 
trousers,  a  spectacular  coat  with  gilt  buttons,  and  car 
ried  a  cane.  We  made  lots  of  money."  A  twenty- 
dollar  bill  was  a  mammoth  sum  to  him  then.  When 
doing  outdoor  work,  he  did  the  lettering  on  windows, 
painting  the  letters  on  the  outside  of  the  glass  instead 
of  the  inside,  thus  saving  the  necessity  of  tracing  them 
backward.  He  would  paint  on  the  sunny  side  of  the 
street  in  the  heat  of  July  till  the  perspiration  streamed 
from  every  pore.  Fear  of  sunstroke  never  entered  his 
head.  There  were  occasions  when  a  reunion  of 
some  sort  drew  people  from  the  country.  The  result 
was  a  crowd  to  watch  the  "Graphics."  On  special  days, 
for  the  sake  of  good  advertising,  one  member  of  the 
Company  would  dress  in  a  spotless  frock  coat  and 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          145 

trousers,  a  Derby  hat,  and  patent  leather  shoes.  Riley 
wore  overalls.  Sometimes  a  partner  would  paint  them 
with  vivid  stripes  and  bars.  Then  would  succeed  an 
Indian  war  dance  which  soon  blocked  the  street  with 
spectators.  However  busy  the  rovers  were,  whatever 
the  number  of  contracts  for  work  ahead,  there  was  al 
ways  time  to  manifest  the  holiday  spirit.  There  was 
a  dearth  of  merriment  when  Riley  was  absent.  His 
companions  hungered  for  his  return. 

"We  take  pleasure,"  they  wrote  while  he  was  so 
journing  a  month  in  Greenfield,  "in  expressing  to  you 
our  appreciation  of  your  talents  and  social  qualities, 
and  desire  you  to  make  us  a  visit  in  behalf  of  'Suffer 
ing  Humanity/  We  would  respectfully  solicit  your 
companionship  for  a  week  or  so  if  your  business  will 
permit  a  holiday  of  that  length  of  time."  Signed — 
Very  respectfully,  F.  H.  Mack,  W.  J.  Ethell,  James 
Whitmore,  James  McClanahan  (The  Original  Graphic 
Advertisers) . 

While  his  advertising  companions  predicted  a  future 
for  Riley,  average  observers  did  not  regard  him  as  un 
usual.  He  was  an  animated  form  of  good  humor — but 
"genius  was  a  long  way  off."  The  spectators  who  stood 
around  him  in  little  towns  were  not  looking  for  that 
spark  of  fire  in  the  fellow  who  drew  pictures  on  the 
hotel  register  and  danced  with  his  companions  as 
he  went  down  with  the  "gang"  to  the  station  to  see 
the  train  come  in.  Genius  did  not  reside  in  the  man 
who  carried  Doctor  Pierce's  Memorandum  Book  in  his 
pocket,  painted  signs  for  the  village  baker,  and  whit 
tled  and  told  stories  in  the  store  on  rainy  days.  There 
were  evidences  of  sign-painting  in  the  neighborhood  of 
every  town  from  Lafayette  to  Ft.  Wayne,  but  the  genial 
public  did  not  consider  the  occupation  a  stepping  stone 


146  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

to  poetry.  It  was  not  to  his  credit  that  Riley  was  often 
"doggrelling  when  he  should  have  been  daubing."  All 
advertisers  however  marked  one  thing :  that  he  was  no 
"humbug  of  the  brush,"  and  later  they  learned  he  was 
no  humbug  of  the  pen.  To  imitate  nature,  they  ob 
served,  artists  must  not  turn  their  backs  on  her.  They 
can  not  paint  outdoor  scenes  indoors.  Riley  knew  this. 
"The  delicacies  of  light  and  shade,"  he  read  in  Christie 
Johnstone,  "can  not  be  trusted  to  memory.  The  high 
est  angel  in  the  sky  must  have  his  eye  upon  them  and 
look  devilish  sharp,  too,  or  he  shan't  paint  them." 

There  is  evidence  along  the  way  from  Peru  to  South 
Bend  that  the  Argonaut  was  not  in  the  advertising 
mood  all  the  time.  The  "Graphics"  held  him  to  his 
agreement  with  difficulty.  The  Golden  Fleece  he  sought 
was  not  the  almighty  dollar.  If  they  made  thirty  dol 
lars  a  day,  as  they  did  in  periods  of  prosperity,  it  was 
unsafe  to  tell  him  before  the  end  of  the  week.  If  on 
Thursday,  for  instance,  he  "accidently"  learned  that 
the  receipts  for  three  days  were  ninety  dollars  he  was 
inclined  to  quit.  "That's  enough;  let's  rest."  Nor 
would  he  be  driven.  When  his  associates  insisted  on 
work  beyond  what  he  thought  was  a  reasonable  demand 
upon  him,  he  would  "hide  away,  loaf  and  write,"  and 
appear  as  mysteriously  as  he  had  disappeared  the  week 
before.  It  was  rumored  that  he  shared  the  time  with 
Cupid.  Love  (so  ran  the  scrap  in  his  vest  pocket)  *•— 

"Love  is  master  of  all  arts 
And  puts  into  human  hearts 
The  strangest  things  to  say  and  do." 

There  was  most  certainly  a  drawing  upon  his  heart 
strings  from  home.  He  had  been  reconciled  to  his 
father.  The  latter  had  been  courting,  too,  and  at  such 


LOGAN'S  "  SPEECH  TO  THE  FISHERMEN 


GRAPHIC  COMPANY  BUSINESS  CARD 


*/ 


\ 


RMSMWH  WJNT.ON  BA8NS  AM 


ftlLEY  &   Me  ('I.A.NAIIA.N    I'.rsiMss   CARD 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          147 

a  season  found  forgiveness  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world.  His  letter  (omitting  irrelevant  items)  reads 
as  follows: 

Greenfield,  Indiana,  August  27,  1873. 
My  Dear  Boy: 

You  can't  imagine  how  anxiously  I  have  been  expect 
ing  a  letter  from  you.  I  wait — wait — wait  with  anx 
ious  hope — but  no  James  comes  home.  He  writes  to 
others  but  not  to  me ;  I  don't  think  it  exactly  right — 
for  really  I  think  I  am  more  anxious  to  hear  from  you 
and  more  desirous  you  should  come  than  any  other. 

I  have  as  you  doubtless  know,  another  half  in  the 
person  of  a  Quaker  lady,  who  kindly  welcomes  you  also. 
She  often  wonders  and  inquires  why  you  do-  not  come. 
I  write  you  with  your  photograph  and  its  indorsements 
in  my  hand.  It  looks  somewhat  natural.  The  hair 
obscures  the  upper  part  of  the  countenance  too  much ; 
and  the  expression  is  somewhat  sad.  The  indorsement 
("He  is  dead  now")  I  suppose  is  irony,  for  report 
says  you  are  a  very  lively  corpse;  the  other  ("He  was 
a  good  boy")  is  literal  I  hope.  Having  passed  boy 
hood  years,  and  glided  into  manhood,  you  are,  I  trust, 
a  very  good  and  prosperous  man.  That  other  expres 
sion  ("Oh,  my  God!")  on  the  back  of  the  photograph — 
I  do  not  know  how  to  interpret  that.  I  hope  it  is  not  an 
exclamation  of  despair  or  pain,  but  a  real  reverent  rec 
ognition  of  God,  coming  from  the  heart,  and  with  the 
certainty  that  He  is  indeed  your  God,  and  will  be  ever 
near  them  that  call  upon  Him  in  faith,  believing. 

Now,  my  Dear  Boy,  please  write  me  frequently;  let 
me  know  how  and  where  you  are  and  how  you  are 
doing — and  come  home  as  soon  as  your  business  will 
allow.  Believe  me  ever  and  truly 

Your  Father, 

R.  A.  RILEY. 

When  the  "Graphics"  sang  "Hail  to  the  Chief,"  there 
was  financial  significance  in  the  strains  as  well  as  mel 
ody.  Riley  had  originated  the  big  sign  idea.  At  his 


148  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

suggestion  a  brother  of  the  brush,  said  by  friends  to 
have  been  one  of  the  most  eccentric  sign-painters  of 
his  generation,  painted  "the  largest  sign  in  the  United 
States,"  on  a  covered  bridge  over  White  River.  "It 
took  all  the  white  lead  in  Anderson  to  paint  it,"  was 
Riley's  word.  Newspaper  notices  of  it  appeared  as 
far  away  as  Minneapolis.  It  caught  the  attention  of  a 
well-known  threshing  machine  company  in  Ohio,  who 
employed  its  designer  to  paint  their  trade-mark  on  the 
factory — a  featherless  rooster  on  a  wall  sixty-five  feet 
high. 

While  his  brother  of  the  brush  was  painting  the 
trade-mark,  Riley  received  a  substantial  offer  from  the 
Howe  Sewing  Machine  Company.  He  had  done  the 
gold  lettering  on  a  few  sewing  machines  for  the  com 
pany,  when  in  Peru.  The  time  seemed  auspicious. 
"Poetry  to  the  bow-wows,"  said  his  Graphic  associates. 
What  they  desired  was  to  see  Riley  reap  the  reward  of 
a  growing  reputation.  That  reward  meant  the  loosen 
ing  of  purse-strings  for  their  benefit.  Riley,  however, 
was  not  in  the  least  inclined  to  mass  a  fortune. 

The  period  covering  his  sign-painting  adventures  was 
radiant  with  variety.  He  touched  merriment  at  all 
points.  One  of  his  partners  had  once  been  a  deacon 
and  had  a  letter  recommending  him  to  "the  brother 
hood  elsewhere  as  a  member  in  good  standing."  Noting 
with  amazement  the  wide  contrast  between  his  con 
duct  and  the  standard  set  by  the  church  Riley  advised 
him  to  hold  on  to  the  letter.  "If  you  ever  put  it  in  a 
church,"  said  he,  "you'll  never  get  it  out." 

Prior  to  the  time  his  friend  painted  the  mammoth 
sign  on  the  White  River  bridge,  Riley  related  with 
great  glee  his  blind-painting  experience  at  Peru,  how  he 
had  "turned  his  eyes  wrong  side  out,  spilled  his  paint 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          149 

on  the  ladder"  and  so  on.  "I'll  go  you  one  better  some 
day,"  said  his  friend,  and  he  did — at  the  bridge.  The 
river  was  at  the  flood.  A  crowd  of  farmers  and  towns 
men  had  gathered  on  the  banks  to  see  the  sign  expand. 
While  painting  from  the  top  of  a  ladder  above  the  mid 
dle  pier,  the  painter  suddenly  slipped  and  fell  into  the 
turbid  waters  and  was  borne  like  a  porpoise  down  the 
stream.  He  was  an  expert  swimmer  and,  by  diving 
under  floating  driftwood,  eluded  the  gaze  of  the  scream 
ing  crowd,  passed  a  river-bend  below  and  came  to  shore. 
Scattered  here  and  there  in  the  crowd  were  friends 
(secret  participants  in  the  ruse)  who  proposed  to  drag 
the  river.  They  had  succeeded  in  awakening  anxious 
sympathy  when  the  "drowning  man"  appeared,  and 
arm  in  arm  with  his  friends  smothered  his  laughter 
and  walked  away  to  town,  leaving  the  crowd  in  utter 
ignorance  of  his  design.  For  a  long  while,  say  thirty 
years  after,  there  were  Andersonites  still  living  who 
did  not  know  that  the  "accident"  was  planned  and 
executed  by  a  poet  and  his  crafty  associates. 

Along  with  amusement  came  hardships.  Riley  had 
with  manifold  pleasures  what  he  called  a  surplus  of 
disappointments.  "Although  I  whined  a  great  deal  at 
the  time,"  said  he,  "these  were  not  to  be  deplored 
since  the  best  rises  to  the  top  in  extremity.  At 
Warsaw  I  met  a  contributor  to  a  local  paper 
(Mr.  S.  B.  McManus),  who  put  spurs  on  my  de 
termination  to  win  recognition.  I  carried  my  poem, 
The  Argonaut'  in  my  overalls  till  it  was  a  confusion 
of  paint  spots  and  ragged  edges.  It  had  been  declined 
by  every  paper  on  the  'White  Pigeon'  line  from  Jones- 
boro  to  Michigan.  My  Warsaw  friend  liked  the  poem. 
The  papers  had  accepted  him  and  he  said  they  would 
accept  me.  A  simple  remark — it  was  a  slender  rope  he 


150  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

threw  me;  doubtless  he  did  not  realize  the  encourage 
ment  he  gave,  but  it  was  long  enough  to  reach  the 
barque  of  a  lone  soul  drifting  by."  As  Riley  went  on 
from  town  to  town  he  was  cheered  by  the  success 
of  men  whose  outlook  had  once  been  as  dismal  as  his 
own.  He  particularly  recalled  Bret  Harte,  how  after 
writing  and  rewriting,  he  had  taken  the  prize  in  a 
thousand-dollar  short  story  contest.  Recognition  was 
not  an  impossible  thing.  His  poem,  "The  Argonaut," 
went  to  rags  with  his  overalls.  As  he  once  remarked,  he 
"told  but  half  the  tale  and  lost  that ;  left  the  song  for 
the  winds  to  sing."  But  his  hopes  were  not  wrecked. 
He  began  to  think  of  other  poems,  such  as  "Faith," 
"Toil,"  and  "Some  Day." 

The  "White  Pigeon"  line  demanded  money  for  trans 
portation.  The  Argonaut  had  none.  At  one  time  he 
offered  a  pair  of  sleeve  buttons  for  a  railroad  ticket. 
As  the  Graphic  Chum  expressed  it,  "he  was  insolvent, 
had  not  enough  sugar  to  reach  the  next  town."  Some 
bitter  recollections  clustered  round  Marion.  He  lived 
in  a  joyless  room,  had  to  spread  newspapers  on  his  bed 
to  keep  out  the  cold.  Board  bills  came  due  and  there 
was  no  money  to  pay  them.  In  the  coldest  weather 
he  was  what  Robert  Burns  calls  the  most  mortifying 
picture  in  human  life,  a  man  seeking  work  and  not  find 
ing  it.  Outdoor  work  was  impossible  and  indoor  work 
— there  was  none.  He  numbered  a  few  post-office  boxes, 
but  the  remuneration  was  not  sufficient  to  pay  lodging. 
"My  host,"  said  Riley,  recalling  the  days,  "proprietor 
of  a  little  rat-trap  of  a  hotel  across  the  street  from 
the  brick  church,  was  also  out  at  the  elbows.  Together 
we  moved  furniture  and  all  to  Huntingdon,  drove  in 
a  wagon  through  the  rain  thirty  miles — and  through 
the  night,  too;  the  moon  was  not  a  dazzling  disk  of 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          151 

brilliancy  nor  were  the  stars  splintered  glitterings  of 
delight." 

Business  revived.  Soon  he  bought  a  forty-dollar 
overcoat  and  drifted  down  stream  to  meet  his  chum  at 
Wabash.  He  was  always  bringing  up  with  the  Graphic 
Chum,  the  man  of  fickle  fancies.  He  had  scaled  orchard 
walls  with  him  and  made  love  to  melon  patches ; 

"Through  the  darkness  and  the  dawn 
They  had  journeyed  on  and  on — 
From  Celina  to  La  Crosse — 
From  possession  unto  loss — 
Seeking  still  from  day  to  day 
For  the  Lands  of  Where-Away." 

They  were  the  Siamese  Twins  of  the  sign-painting  bus 
iness,  "who  had  rolled  in  the  game  from  the  time  their 
happy  remembrance  began."  At  Wabash  they  made 
such  a  favorable  impression  on  the  chief  merchant  of 
the  town  that  he  proposed  to  send  them  to  the  country 
to  seek  work  in  his  family  carriage.  "We  can't  use 
that  carriage,"  remonstrated  the  chum,  "the  paint  will 
splash  it."  "Then  we'll  go  without  paint,"  said  Riley; 
"not  every  day  can  sign-painters  afford  a  carriage." 

"Nothing  can  come  from  nothing."  So  Reynolds,  the 
painter  to  the  king,  had  said  in  the  "British  Book."  "In 
vain,"  he  wrote,  "painters  or  poets  endeavor  to  invent 
without  materials  on  which  the  mind  may  work,  and 
from  which  invention  must  originate."  The  Argonaut 
acted  on  the  suggestion  at  every  turn  in  the  road.  He 
was  getting  an  education.  As  if  sign-painting  and 
many  other  occupations  of  those  years  were  insufficient, 
he  joined  a  baseball  club.  He  did  not  play— "served 
as  a  catcher  one  afternoon  only."  He  did,  however,  con 
ceive  the  idea  of  getting  together  the  "crack  players" 
of  the  county.  He  pitted  the  "Andersons"  against 


152  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

the  "Muncies,"  From  this  came  his  "Benson  Out-Ben- 
soned,"  an  inferior  prose  sketch  printed  later  in  a 
county  paper,  but  chiefly  remembered  for  the  part  it 
played  in  an  early  lecture  failure. 

He  was  acquiring  material — from  books  as  well  as 
from  men  and  affairs.  To  the  "Graphics"  he  was  a 
mine  of  quotation.  "Keep  to  the  right — quote  poetry 
about  that  if  you  dare,"  said  one  of  them  as  they  were 
traveling  a  country  road.  Instantly  the  Argonaut  re 
peated  the  old  English  Quatrain : 

"The  Law  of  the  Road  is  a  paradox  quite, 

In  riding  or  driving  along : 
If  you  go  to  the  left  you  are  sure  to  go  right ; 
If  you  go  to  the  right,  you  go  wrong" — 

a  muddle  that  was  strikingly  illustrative  of  incidents 
throughout  the  poet's  life.  Over  and  over  things  he 
started  to  do  went  wrong.  The  simplest  efforts  often 
ended  in  complexities. 

"The  pranks  men  play  live  after  them."  So  Riley 
mused  one  day  while  riding  on  the  "Buckeye"  with  the 
Standard  Remedy  vender,  who  had  just  received  a 
sharp  note  from  a  preacher  in  a  Dunkard  settlement. 
"There  is  a  sign  out  here,"  wrote  the  preacher,  "that 
shocks  the  neighborhood."  The  Graphic  Company,  in 
cluding  one  whose  name  was  Ethell,  had  painted  a 
sign  near  the  Dunkard  settlement  and  had  subscribed 
their  names  as  usual.  With  a  simple  twist  of  the 
brush,  Riley  obscured  the  first  two  letters  in  Ethell 
and  capitalized  the  third,  so  the  signature  read, 
Riley,  McClanahan  &  Hell.  This  was  not  done  to 
discredit  Ethell,  who  was  one  of  the  most  blame 
less  men  of  the  Company.  As  a  farmer  remarked, 
"It  was  simply  the  prank  of  a  prankish  poet."  The 
sign  was  changed  and  the  preacher's  wrath  softened, 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          153 

but  not  before  the  "Graphics"  and  "Standard  Remedies" 
had  suffered  injury.  Talebearers  had  been  busy.  Pious 
farmers,  passing  and  repassing  the  sign,  had  retailed 
the  scandal.  In  due  time  the  good  people  of  the  neigh 
borhood  began  to  talk  about  the  "Hell  Company."  A 
circuit  rider,  observing  the  mischievous  conduct  of  the 
members  of  the  Company  around  the  tavern  and  de 
ploring  their  improvident  use  of  money,  remarked  that 
the  reproachful  name  contained  more  truth  than  poetry. 
Riley  sings  of  the  joy  and  pathos  of  that  vagrant 
time  in  "Dave  Field."  Field  had  shared  the  happy-go- 
lucky  experience  up  and  down  the  old  "White  Pigeon" 
railroad: 

"Let  me  write  you  a  rune  or  rhyme 

For  the  sake  of  the  past  that  we  knew, 
,When  we  were  vagrants  along  the  road, 
Yet  glad  as  the  skies  were  blue. 

"Let  me  chant  you  a  strain 

Of  those  indolent  days  of  ours, 
With  our  chairs  a-tilt  at  the  wayside  inn 
And  our  backs  in  the  woodland  flowers, 

"Let  me  drone  you  a  dream  of  the  world 

And  the  glory  it  held  for  us — 
With  your  pencil-and-canvas  dreams 
And  I  with  my  pencil  thus. 

"A  sigh  for  the*  dawn  long  dead  and  gone, 

And  a  laugh  for  the  dawn  concealed, 
As  bravely  a  while  we  still  toil  along 
To  the  topmost  hill,  Dave  Field." 

So  many  poems  are  traceable  to  the  restless  excur 
sions  of  the  Graphic  period  that  it  seems  ungracious 
to  berate  it.  They  interpret  Riley's  life  amiss  who 


154  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

deplord  those  pleasures  and  hardships.  Whatever  may 
be  said  of  his  wanderings  and  the  temptations  and 
delinquencies  occasioned  by  them,  the  fact  is  that  he 
regarded  them  a  part  of  his  education.  The  voice  of 
the  "wanderlust"  had  in  it  the  ring  of  authority.  He 
answered  it — and  the  reward  was  the  experience  his 
genius  required. 

One  should  look  with  kindly  eye  upon  his  first  in 
clination  to  be  a  sign-painter,  prompted  by  his  reading 
the  Life  of  George  Morland.  Of  all  sketches  in  the 
"British  Books/'  Morland's  life  was,  to  Riley,  the  most 
fascinating.  Morland's  career  had  "the  sharp  sword 
of  necessity  at  its  back."  The  youthful  Riley  sat  with 
him  among  sailors,  rustics,  and  fishermen  while  the 
roof  tree  rang  with  laughter  and  song;  he  called  to  the 
drivers  of  the  coaches;  he  hallooed  to  the  gentle 
men  of  the  whip;  he  rode  the  saddle  horses  from 
the  White  Lion  Livery  and  went  all  in  a  quiver 
when  the  artist  painted  signs.  The  rapidity  of  his 
work  surpassed  comprehension.  As  time  elapsed  Riley 
manifested  some  of  Morland's  characteristics.  Like 
him  he  became  a  roving  sign-painter,  and  at  times  a 
dispenser  of  conviviality.  Like  him  he  seemed  to 
possess  two  minds — one,  the  animated  soul  of  genius 
by  which  he  rose  to  fame  and  made  himself  victorious 
over  many  ills  of  life ;  and  the  other,  "a  groveling  pro 
pensity,"  which  in  his  youthful  days  sought  persistently 
to  wreck  his  fortune  and  condemn  him  to  the  gaiety 
and  folly  of  dissipation. 

Re-reading  the  book,  Riley  noticed  Morland's  orig 
inality — his  style  and  conception  were  his  own — he 
was  always  natural — he  found  things  to  charm  the  eye 
in  the  commonest  occurrence — he  was  a  painter  for 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          155 

the  people,  all  the  people,  the  good  and  the  bad,  the 
rich  and  the  poor.  "Morland's  name  was  on  every  lip," 
he  remarked  in  an  after  time ;  "painting  was  as  natural 
to  him  as  language ;  he  opened  his  heart  to  the  multi 
tude.  The  mistake  he  made  was  not  in  going  among 
the  reptiles,  for  such  his  associates  of  low  degree  were 
called,  the  mistake  he  made  was  in  lowering  his  conduct 
to  the  level  of  their  debauchery.  He  had  to  see  them. 
Did  he  not  paint  four  thousand  pictures?  It  was 
genius  to  make  the  pictures;  it  was  not  genius  to  de 
light  in  degradation." 

Moralists  have  claimed  that  Riley  should  not  have 
read  Morland's  Life.  There  were  homes  in  Greenfield 
where  the  book  was  forbidden.  The  fact,  however, 
remains  that  Riley  repeatedly  read  the  book  and  never 
expressed  a  syllable  of  regret  for  having  done  so.  An 
other  thing  equally  significant  is  the  fact  that  although 
he  was  fascinated  with  the  book,  he  never  wasted  his 
young  manhood  in  the  wild,  imprudent  manner  of  the 
British  artist. 

When  older,  Riley  always  made  it  clear  that  a  poet 
had  to  know  the  people  before  he  could  write  verse  for 
the  people.  He  had  to  be  bewildered  with  living  before 
he  could  write  "A  Ballad  from  April."  After  he  had 
found  "a  man  for  breakfast,"  as  the  phrase  ran,  after 
he  had  mingled  with  the  section  gang  and  had  seen  an 
Irish  mother  weep  over  the  mangled  form  of  her 
son,  after  he  had  signed  the  pledge,  talked  Temperance 
and  worked  right  and  left  in  the  "blue  ribbon  move 
ment,"  then  he  could  write  "Tom  Johnson's  Quit." 

Here  in  Riley's  erratic  days,  as  in  the  lives  of  so 
many  men  eminent  in  art  and  literature,  is  the  ques 
tion  of  the  wheat  and  the  tares,  the  intermingling 


156  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

of  good  and  evil.  Ruskin  cites  the  instance  of 
an  artist,  not  only  tolerating  but  delighting  in  the 
disorder  of  the  lower  streets  of  London,  "the  web  of 
his  work  wrought  with  vices  too  singular  to  be  for 
given,"  yet  enough  virtue  and  beauty  left  in  him  to 
make  him  "supreme  in  the  poetry  of  landscape/'  great 
and  good  qualities  sufficient  to  make  him  the  "Shakes 
peare  of  painting."  In  all  genius,  some  one  sagely 
observes,  there  is  a  touch  of  chaos,  a  strain  of  the 
vagabond ;  and  the  admirers  of  genius  in  all  ages,  and 
particularly  the  friends  of  poets  have  avoided  many 
erroneous  and  damaging  conclusions  by  remembering 
this  fact. 

On  the  whole  then,  friends  of  literature  are  not  to 
deplore  the  Graphic  days.  They  are  to  rejoice  that 
Riley 

"Roved  the  rounds  of  pleasures  through, 
And  tasted  each  as  it  pleased  him  to." 

They  are  to  smile  when 

"He  joined  o»ld  songs  and  the  clink  and  din, 
Of  the  revelers  at  the  banquet  hall, 

And  tripped  his  feet  where  the  violin 
Spun  its  waltz  for  the  carnival." 

They  are  to  be  glad,  though  it  is  more  difficult, 

"That  he  toiled  away  for  a  weary  while, 
Through  day's  dull  glare  and  night's  deep  gloom ; 
That  many  a  long  and  lonesome  mile 
He  paced  in  the  round  of  his  dismal  room; 
That  he  fared  on  hunger — and  drunk  of  pain 
As  the  drouthy  earth  might  drink  of  rain. 


WITH  THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY          157 

"So  the  Argonaut  came  safe  from  doom, 
Back  at  last  to  his  lonely  room, 
Filled  with  its  treasure  of  work  to  do 
And  radiant  with  the  light  and  bloom 
Of  the  summer  sun  and  his  glad  soul,  too! — - 
Came  to  his  work  with  tuneful  words 
Sweet  and  divine  as  the  song  of  the  birds." 


CHAPTER  VII 

WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED 

THE  reader  is  now  to  consider  another  phase  of 
a  restless  life,  which  in  point  of  years  blends 
with  the  employment  of  time  in  sign-painting. 
The  Argonaut  has  joined  himself  to  a  band  of  home 
companions.  His  excursions  are  musical  and  confined 
chiefly  to  the  streets  and  highways  of  his  home  county. 
His  joyous  occasions  suggest  a  season  of  May-time 
when  he  crowded  years  into  a  few  brief  months.  The 
nights  were  long,  deep  and  beautiful,  chiefly  the  "silent 
afternoons  of  the  night,"  as  he  so  finely  wrote,  "when 
the  heavens  poured  down  upon  him  their  mellow  wine 
of  glory."  He  painted  signs  by  day  and  reveled  in 
music  by  night.  "With  the  fiddle  and  the  flute," 
said  one  of  his  home  friends,  "he  and  his  companions 
drifted  out  under  the  stars  and  laid  the  pipes  for  popu 
larity  with  the  girls."  It  was  the  season  of  sweet  sing 
ing  voices,  as  he  wrote  in  a  fragment  on  "A  Tune" — 

"Sweet  as  the  tune  that  drips 
From  minstrel  finger-tips 

That  twang  the  strings 
Of  sweet  guitars  in  June 
At  midnight,  when  the  moon 
In  silence  sings." 

Life  was  a  dancing  medley  and  heartily  Riley  re 
sponded  to  its  charms  as  did  other  young  men  of  the 
town.  He  heard  the  tinkle  and  drip  of  the  music  that 

158 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          159 

they  heard,  but  his  heart  was  also  responsive  to  melo 
dies  they  did  not  hear.  While  sharing  the  charms  of 
rollicking  society,  his  thought  also  floated 

"Out  on  the  waves  that  break 
In  crests  of  song  on  the  shoreless  deep 
Where  hearts  neither  wake  nor  sleep/' 

His  love  of  music  developed  early.  There  was 
rhythm  in  the  rock  of  the  cradle.  Unlike  Whittier  who 
knew  little  of  music  and  could  scarcely  distinguish  one 
tune  from  another,  Riley  reveled  in  "the  concord  of 
sweet  sounds."  As  he  grew  older  he  could  repeat  any 
air  after  once  hearing  it.  At  the  age  of  five  he  heard  a 
violin  for  the  first  time  at  a  neighbor's  house  where 
children  had  gathered  to  listen  to  a  country  musi 
cian.  The  sensation  was  delicious ;  the  child  caught  his 
breath  as  children  do  in  woodland  swings.  "He  danced 
on  the  steps,"  said  his  mother,  "in  an  ungovernable 
spasm  of  delight."  The  prattle  of  childhood  was  blent 

"With  the  watery  jingle  of  pans  and  spoons, 
And  the  motherly  chirrup  of  glad  content, 
And  neighborly  gossip  and  merriment, 
And  old-time  fiddle  tunes," 

as  the  poet  happily  sang  in  A  Child-World.  Then 
followed  his  boyish  interest  in  the  band  wagons  that 
glittered  with  a  splendor  all  their  own  while  he  marched 
with  boys  of  high  and  low  degree  in  circus-day  parades. 
He  had  visions  of  a  time  when  he  should  travel  with  a 
circus  and  dangle  his  feet  before  admiring  thousands 
from  the  back  seat  of  a  golden  chariot.  A  little  later, 
at  the  age  of  twelve  he  was  charmed  with  the  music 
of  the  Saxhorn  Band,  the  old  Greenfield  organization 
that  marched  away  to  the  war  in  1861.  A  serenade 
at  the  farther  edge  of  town  one  midnight  before  their 


160  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

going,  awakened  in  the  youthful  Riley  heart  a  rap 
ture  undefined.    Few  lads  would  have  lain 

"So  still  in  bed 

They  could  hear  the  locust  blossoms  dropping  on  the 
shed." 

In  his  school-days  Riley  often  took  more  interest  in 
drawing  and  music  than  in  his  books.  There  was  a  pic 
ture  in  his  geography  of  a  herdsman  lassoing  wild 
horses  on  the  pampas  of  South  America.  Riley  drew 
in  place  of  the  lasso,  a  guitar,  with  which  the  rider 
was  beating  a  horse  over  the  head.  "The  guitar  is  a 
light  instrument,"  he  once  remarked,  "but  that  was 
not  giving  it  light  treatment.  The  horseman  wore  a 
gaily  colored  scarf,  which  reminded  me  of  a  Spanish 
cavalier,  and  that  suggested  the  guitar." 

What  dreamy  visions  ranged  over  the  "arch  of  crea 
tion"  in  those  callow  days  of  youth.  The  old  National 
Road,  blossoming  with  its  "romance  of  snowy  cara 
vans"  ran  like  a  pageant  through  the  town.  Along  with 
its  ox-carts,  its  Conestoga  wagons  and  chiming  bells,  it 
brought  the  unriddled  mysteries  of  music  and  love. 
"Bright-eyed,  plump,  delicious  looking  girls"  were  not 
strangers  to  Greenfield  and  the  long  highway  that  bi 
sected  the  town. 

Lovers  and  poets,  according  to  John  Hay,  are  prone 
to  describe  the  ladies  of  their  love  as  airy  and  delicate 
in  structure,  so  angelic  that  the  flowers  they  tread  upon 
are  greatly  improved  in  health  and  spirit  by  the 
process.  The  girls  who  traveled  the  National  Road 
were  not  of  this  ethereal  type.  Nevertheless  they  were 
beautiful.  "Their  hair  rippled  carelessly  over  their 
shoulders,"  said  Riley,  "and  many  were  graceful  as 
quails."  An  emigrant  with  his  wife  and  daughter  came 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          161 

slowly  westward  on  the  Road  one  sultry  evening  and 
camped  on  the  common,  the  "village  green"  at  the 
edge  of  town  near  the  Riley  homestead.  The  arrival 
of  a  charming  maiden  just  ten  years  old,  who  could 
play  an  accordion  and  sing,  was  an  event  and  the 
budding  Riley  knew  it.  Her  stay  was  brief,  the  family 
"dropping  into  night  again,"  westward  bound  to  the 
land  beyond  the  Wabash.  But  she  had  remained  long 
enough  to  teach  him  how  to  play  the  instrument — long 
enough  to  become  his  "first  love."  She  also  is  credited 
with  being  the  original  of  the  poem,  "The  Old  Wish," 
suggested  by  a  falling  star.  When  he  became  a  man, 
Riley  remembered  himself  as  the  callow  lad  in  love 
with  the  little  "accordion  wonder."  "Brief  but  beau 
tiful,"  he  said, 

"For  my  wild  heart  had  wished  for  the  unending1 
Devotion  of  the  little  maid  of  nine — 
And  that  the  girl-heart,  with  the  woman's  blending 
Might  be  forever  mine." 

The  "village  green"  was  the  trysting  place  a  few 
years  later  for  another  musical  episode.  In  those  days 
he  did  not  leave  home  to  find  answers  to  his  dreams. 
They  floated  to  him  from  distant  lands,  from  the  dawn 
and  the  unknown — and  he  was  happy.  "I  was  not  no 
madic  then,"  he  remarked  when  older,  pleasantly  allud 
ing  to  a  merry  strain  in  a  McGuffey  Reader, 

"Quite  contented  with  my  state, 
I  did  envy  not  the  great ; 
Since  true  pleasure  may  be  seen 
On  a  cheerful  village  green." 

Out  of  that  primitive  train  of  old-fashioned  wagons 
on  the  National  Road  there  drifted  one  May  morning 
a  "prairie  schooner"  with  a  family  from  New  Eng- 


162  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

land.  It  was  a  long  wintry  way  they  had  traveled. 
The  horses  having  dwindled  to  the  ghost  of  a  team,  the 
family  halted  on  the  "green"  and  christened  their  an 
chorage  "Camp  Necessity."  It  turned  out  that  they  re 
mained  for  the  summer,  renting  two  rooms  with  a  time- 
worn  portico  in  front  where  morning-glory  vines 
climbed  up  the  trellis  to  smile  at  hollyhocks  on  the 
gravel  walk.  There  was  a  musical  daughter  in  the 
family,  who  was1  known  to  her  new  friends  as  "Anna 
Mayflower,"  to  celebrate  her  native  Yankee  State  and 
the  month  of  her  arrival  in  Greenfield.  Her  winsome 
manners  and  her  guitar  soon  drew  a  circle  of  young 
folks  around  her.  Ere  long  Riley  came,  first  to  take 
lessons  on  the  guitar — and  later,  lessons  in  love.  One 
autumn  evening  as  he  approached  the  gravel  walk  he 
heard  music  of  a  doleful  character — 

"The  long,  long  weary  day 
Has  passed  in  tears  away, 
And  I  am  weeping, 
My  lone  watch  keeping." 

"Why  that  melancholy  wail?"  he  asked  on  entering 
her  door. 

"I  am  going  away." 

"Away? — where — to  Sugar  Creek?" 

"No— to  the  Great  North  Woods." 

"Promise  me,"  said  he,  "you'll  never  sing  that  dirge 
again" — and  so  far  as  the  lover  knew,  she  kept  her 
word. 

The  next  week  the  transients  were  westward  bound 
again,  and  the  lad  and  lassie  were  "weeping — their  lone 
watch  keeping."  Letters  were  numerous  between 
Greenfield  and  the  North  Woods  and  tradition  has  it 
that  they  were  love  letters.  Time  passed,  a  few  years 
only,  and  the  music  of  his  soul  found  expression  in 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          163 

words.  Caressing  his  recollections  of  "Camp  Neces- 
ity"  and  the  portico  (which  for  the  sake  of  meter  he 
changed  to  "balcony"),  he  wrote  "The  Old  Guitar," 
cherishing  the  while 

"A  smile  for  a  lovely  face 
That  came  with  the  memory 
Of  a  flower-and-perfume-haunted  place 
And  a  moonlit  balcony." 

The  sequel  was  an  incident  that  touched  his  heart 
tenderly.  After  the  guitar  had  moldered  into  decay 
and  the  old  airs  had  become  pulseless,  long  after  the 
poet's  heart  had  been  bruised  by  the  Bludgeon  of 
Fate,  long  after  "Anna  Mayflower's"  address  had  been 
lost  and  forgotten,  there  drifted  to  his  desk  one  day  in 
the  city  a  letter  from  the  Michigan  woods,  just  as 
twenty  years  before  the  author  of  it — a  maiden  of  six 
teen — had  drifted  into  Greenfield.  The  maiden  was  a 
mother  now.  She  and  her  children  were  rejoicing  that 
Fame  had  come  down  the  National  Road  and  found 
two  books — Rhymes  of  Childhood  and  Afterwhiles — 
"two  books,"  she  wrote,  "that  will  survive  the  wrecks 
of  type  and  time — two  books  that  will  live 

'As  long  as  the  heart  has  passions*, 
As  long  as  life  has  woes/  " 

When  about  twenty  years  old  Riley  began  to  think 
seriously  of  becoming  a  musical  performer.  "I  coop 
ered  on  the  banjo,  bass  viol,  piano  and  organ,"  said  he, 
recalling  the  musical  days ;  "I  could  play  on  anything 
from  a  hand-organ  up  to  credulity.  I  started  out  with 
a  flageolet.  You  know  that  remarkable  instrument.  It 
has  a  goitre  in  the  neck,  and  swells  up  like  a  cobra  de 
capello.  You  play  into  one  end  of  it  and  the  performer 
is  often  as  greatly  surprised  at  the  output  as  the 


164  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

hearers."  Those  were  the  sleepless  days  for  his  neigh 
bors.  They 

"Hopelessly  asked  why  the  boy  with  the  horn 
And  its  horrible  havoc  had  ever  been  born." 

"He  was  the  plague  of  the  streets,"  said  a  Greenfield 
resident;  "when  he  played  on  the  porch,  the  neighbors 
went  in  and  closed  their  doors  and  windows."  He 
could  sing,  too,  especially  songs  in  dialect,  although, 
according  to  his  own  opinion,  the  chief  thing  about  his 
voice  was  that  it  gave  variety  rather  than  pleasure.  He 
had  friends  however  kind  enough  to  say  his  singing 
was  alone  worth  the  price  of  admission.  He  was  ama 
teurish  enough  to  thrum  such  old  favorites  as  "Twenty 
Years  Ago,"  "Old  Kentucky  Home,"  "Rocked  in  the 
Cradle  of  the  Deep,"  and  "Come  Where  My  Love  Lies 
Dreaming."  He  twanged  comic  songs  on  the  banjo, 
indeed,  wrote  two  or  three  himself,  the  idea  literally 
creeping  into  his  mind  that  he  might  some  day  be  a 
character-song  man  and  compose  his  own  selections. 
Although  possessed  of  ear,  taste  and  genius,  he  had 
neither  the  inclination  nor  the  persistence  to  learn  the 
notes.  Like  Gainsborough  he  took  his  first  step,  but 
the  second  was  out  of  his  reach  and  the  summit  unat 
tainable.  "I  don't  read  music,"  he  said,  "but  I  know 
the  dash  and  swing  of  the  pen  that  rained  it  on  the 
page."  No  one  could  so  certainly  as  he  detect  it  in 
the  sound 

"Of  dim  sweet  singing  voices,  interwound 
With  purl  of  flute  and  subtle  twang  of  string 
Strained  through  the  lattice  where  the  roses  cling." 

The  one  thing  his  musical  years  have  to  offer  is 
variety.  Reading  between  the  lines,  one  discovers  that 
the  purpose  of  the  Muse  was  the  education  of  her  child. 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          165 

She  would  have  him  climb  by  failures,  by  experience, 
by  slow  degrees.  In  her  eyes  the  waste  basket  was  as 
essential  as  the  "Poet's  Corner"  in  the  weekly  paper. 
She  was  content  if  in  a  hundred  lines  she  could  find  one 
crystal,  knowing1  that  as  her  favorite  grew  to  maturity 
the  crytals  would  increase. 

"When  the  Fates,"  it  has  been  observed,  "will  that 
something  should  come  to  pass,  they  send  forth  a  million 
little  circumstances  to  clear  and  prepare  the  way." 
The  Fates  decreed  that  Riley  should  not  be  a  musician, 
but  it  took  some  time  to  bring  him  round  to  that  con 
clusion.  One  of  the  little  circumstances  was  an  acci 
dent  while  he  and  a  few  companions  were  driving  to  a 
village  to  take  part  in  a  musical  progranr.  A  special 
feature  of  the  evening  was  "an  original  poem"  by  the 
"Distinguished  Poet  of  Center  Township."  It  was  a 
raw,  snowy  day.  They  drove  a  mule  to  a  "jumper-" 
sled,  an  animal  that  was  as  perverse  and  unreliable  as 
the  wind.  "The  mule,"  said  Riley,  "scared  at  an  ob 
ject  in  the  tanyard,  ran  off  and  recklessly  distributed 
our  musical  instruments  along  the  road.  Like  Brom 
Bones,  we  met  the  devil.  My  friends  found  me  bruised 
and  unconscious,  in  a  heap  astride  the  'bull-fiddle*  in 
a  fence  corner.  Fate  was  trying  to  tell  me  I  was  not 
to  be  a  musician." 

The  original  poem,  "Joe  Biggsby's  Proposal,"  was 
the  hit  of  the  evening  although  it  made  young  Riley 
as  nervous  as  the  lover  he  tried  to  depict,  who  in 
reality  was  none  other  than  himself.  "It's  about  a 
fellow,"  he  read, 

"About  a  fellow  that  both  of  us  knows — 
It  might  be  Thomas  or  John — 
The  awkwardest  fellow,  we'll  just  suppose, 
That  ever  the  sun  shone  on ; 


166  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

So  awkward  he  stumbled  and  fell  in  love 
With  a  most  pretty  girl  at  that, 
With  a  voice  as  sweet  as  a  turtledove 
And  eyes  as  black  as  my  hat" — 

in  all,  twelve  stanzas  about  his  lady-love,  which  tho 
"Distinguished  Poet"  subsequently  consigned  to  the 
waste  basket. 

It  was  in  those  caroling  days  that  he  made  his  debut 
as  a  bass  drummer  in  a  brass  band.  "You  should 
have  seen  him  abuse  a  base  drum,"  remarked  a  band 
member.  He  soon  hammered  himself  into  the  enviable 
position  of  snare  drummer,  and  in  the  Greeley  cam 
paign  became  a  regular  member  of  the  band — the  Green 
field  Cornet  Band,  succeeded  by  the  Adelphian  Band, 
to  which  he  gave  the  name,  and  "two  removes,"  said 
he,  "from  the  old  Saxhorn  Band  of  the  war  days,"  (so 
named  from  the  band  instruments  which  bore  the  cele 
brated  Saxhorn  label).  Technically,  the  Cornet  Band 
was  superior,  due  largely  to  the  interest  Riley  awak 
ened  in  good  music.  "A  poor  brass  band,"  he  re 
marked,  "away  from  home  one  day  can  do  more  damage 
to  a  town  than  twenty  enterprising  citizens  of  that 
place  can  repair  in  ten  years."  He  was  an  irregular 
member  of  the  Adelphian  Band  and  "glad  of  it,"  he 
said,  "for  when  the  notes  came  due  for  their  extrava 
gant  band  wagon,  the  creditor  could  not  reach  me  by 
legal  proceedings.  Pay  a  band  note?  I  did  not  have 
enough  money  to  liquidate  a  notary  fee."  It  was  with 
difficulty  that  the  Adelphians  saved  their  wagon  from 
the  sheriff's  hammer. 

A  solace  for  the  Adelphian  boys  in  those  insolvent 
days  was  a  huge  marble  cake  with  three  pieces  espe 
cially  wrapped  in  fancy  paper  for  the  "Poet."  The 
cake  was  the  gift  of  sweethearts,  who  thus  expressed 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED         167 

to  their  lovers  their  gratitude  for  a  "joy  ride"  in  the 
new  band  wagon.  Contrary  to  the  ladies'  expectation, 
the  Muse  was  languid.  "Oh,  Muse !"  the  "Poet"  wrote, 

"Inspire  our  'Faber  No.  2' 
To  dull  itself,  at  least,  with  something  new; 
Command  it  hence  at  Fancy's  Fate  to  chapper 
On  Three  Graces  in  a  paper  wrapper. 

"The  pleasures  manifold  of  this  sweet  feast 
Would  fill  a  dozen  pages  at  the  least, 
But,  Ladies,  we'll  inflict  you  with  but  one — 
With  trifling  change  we  quote  from  Tennyson : 
It  'gentler  on  digestive  organ  lies 
Than  tired  eyelids  on  tired  eyes.' 
For  this  entendra  you  will  please  excuse 
A  blunt  lead  pencil  and  a  drowsy  Muse." 

The  country  "joy  ride"  afforded  an  enlivening  ex 
perience.  While  the  band  boys  with  their  sweethearts 
were  on  their  way  to  a  Blue  River  town  a  storm  befell. 
As  Riley  remarked,  "Old  Jupiter  Pluvius  took  part  in 
the  performance.  The  rain  beginning  to  vex  the  fields, 
the  contents  of  the  band  wagon  were  crowded  into  a 
barn,  and  held  there  a  whole  rainy  day."  As  usual, 
when  merriment  was  required,  the  Adelphians  drew  on 
Riley's  fertility  of  resources.  Recalling  that  the  scene 
in  Hogarth's  Strolling  Actresses  was  laid  in  a  barn, 
fitted  up  like  a  theater,  he  resolved  to  assemble  a  simi 
lar  company  of  performers,  not  for  the  amusement  of 
mankind,  but  for  the  pleasure  of  a  community  on  Old 
Brandywine.  He  improvised  a  kind  of  rural  opera  and, 
barring  the  half-dressed  figures  on  the  old  English 
playbill,  it  bore  some  resemblance  to  Hogarth's  The 
Devil  to  Pay  in  Heaven.  Instead  of  ancient  deities 
for  dramatis  personse,  he  had  the  Adelphians  and  their 


168  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

sweethearts  and  he  saw  to  it  especially  that  no  damsel 
should  represent  the  "Tragic  Muse." 

After  feasting  on  a  picnic  dinner,  the  players  cleared 
the  barn  floor  and  opened  their  "Country  Drama"  with 
a  polka  as  joyous  and  wild  as  the  music  that  struck 
wonder  and  applause  to  the  hearts  of  "The  Jolly  Beg 
gars,"  the  whole  company  dancing  to  the  cornet,  violin, 
guitar  and  violincello. 

"Wi  quaffing  and  laughing, 
They  ranted  and  they  sang; 
Wi  jumping  and  thumping, 
The  vera  girdle  rang." 

Then  it  was  a  fandango,  a  hornpipe,  a  quadrille,  a 
charade,  or  masquerade — anything  to  end  the  day  in  a 
carnival  of  enjoyment.  The  Adelphians  were  not  want 
ing  in  powers  of  invention,  particularly  if  accompanied 
by  their  sweethearts.  The  program  was  both  musical 
and  theatrical.  That  night,  after  the  storm,  when  the 
moon  rose  out  of  the  woods  to  flood  the  barn  floor  with 
light  and  tangle  her  beams  with  dancing  feet  the  Muse 
found  another  thread  of  gold  for  the  Golden  Fleece. 
She  was  not  drowsy  in  "The  Last  Waltz" : — 

"What  happiness  we  had, 
When  that  last  waltz  went  mad 
And  wailed  so  wildly  sad — 

So  weirdly  sweet — 
It  seemed  some  silver  tune 
Unraveled  from  the  moon 
And  trailed,  that  night  of  June, 

Beneath  our  feet! 

"A  marriage  of  glad  hands — 
A  gleam  of  silken  bands — 
A  storm  of  loosened  strands — 
A  whirling  sea. — 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          169 

The  broken  breath — the  rush 
Of  swift  sweet  words — the  flush 
Of  closed  lids — and  the  hush 
Of  ecstasy! 

"O'Love'I    0  long  delight! 

0  music  of  that  night ! 
The  seasons  in  their  flight 

Have  not  been  false; 
The  arms  that  held  you  then, 
Enfold  you  now  as  when 

1  kissed  you,  first  of  men, 
In  that  last  waltz." 

War  Barnett,  a  member  of  the  old  Saxhorn  Band, 
recalled  that  Riley's  efforts  to  play  on  musical  instru 
ments  lacked  the  patience  of  persistence.  The  Adel- 
phians,  however,  marking  Riley's  enthusiasm  a  few 
years  later,  noted  a  beautiful  exception — his  love  of 
the  guitar  and  the  violin,  chiefly  the  violin.  Leaning 
over  his  instrument,  the  hope  in  his  heart  grew 
sweeter  than  songs  without  words.  Just  as  Longfellow 
embodied  the  spirit  of  poetry  in  the  majesty  of  the  sea, 
the  everlasting  hills,  and  the  ever-shifting  beauty  of 
the  seasons,  so  Riley  embodied  the  spirit  of  music  in 
objects  of  simple  interest  and  love,  in  the  old-time 
fiddler,  in  the  robin  teetering  on  the  bough,  in  a  merry 
boy  at  play,  in  the  maiden  tripping  through  the  meadow 
grass.  "Tilt  the  Cup,"  he  besought  the  hunter  boy, 

"Tilt  the  cup 
Of  your  silver  bugle  up, 
And  like  wine  pour  out  for  me 
All  your  limpid  melody ! 
Pouch  your  happy  lips  and  blare 
Music's  kisses  everywhere, 
Wave  o'er  forest,  field  and  town 
Tufts  of  tune  like  thistledown, 
And  in  mists  of  song  divine 
Fill  this  violin  of  mine." 


170  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

His  desire  to  play  on  the  violin  was  quickened  into 
a  passion  at  the  age  of  nineteen.  He  read  stories  and 
legends  of  Ole  Bull,  the  Master  Musician,  "who  lived 
in  the  ideal  world,  whose  language  was  not  speech,  but 
song."  To  Riley  the  great  Norwegian  was  a  modern 
Orpheus.  Birds  came  out  of  the  thickets,  and 
dancing  streams  stayed  their  onward  feet.  A  fairy 
throng  of  elves  and  spirits  whirled  in  wild  delight 
around  him  (so  he  read  in  Longfellow)  and  mingled 
with  these  were 

"Screams  of  sea-birds  in  their  flight, 
And  the  tumult  of  the  wind  at  night." 

Ole  Bull's  violin,  too,  was  the  magical  harp  of  gold. 
The  pine  and  maple  from  which  it  was  made  had 
rocked  and  wrestled  with  the  wind  in  the  Tyrolean 
forest,  on  the  Italian  side  of  the  Alps,  where  sunshine 
and  sea  infused  melody  into  the  trees.  There  was 
something  also  in  the  folk-type  of  the  Norwegian  land 
similar  to  that  of  Hoosierland.  The  people  were  ani 
mated,  enthusiastic  and  practical — "a  curious  com 
bination,"  it  was  said,  "of  the  prosaic  and  the  ideal." 
Such  a  combination  made  Norway  rich  in  men  of 
genius  as  like  conditions  have  since  produced  like  re 
sults  in  Indiana. 

To  hear  Ole  Bull  and  to  see  his  violin  became  a 
fixed  purpose.  "I  would  walk  fifty  miles,"  said  Riley, 
"to  see  the  diamonds  in  his  bow." 

Although  Riley  was  forty  years  the  junior  of  Ole 
Bull  there  was  a  striking  similarity  in  their  lives.  The 
ruling  passion  of  each  was  an  abiding  love  of  home 
country.  The  poetry  in  its  scenery  and  the  native 
merit  of  the  people  took  hold  of  each  from  childhood. 
That  of  .Norway  was  reflected  in  Ole  Bull's  style  of  play- 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          171 

ing  and  gave  to  his  selections  the  charm  of  originality 
that  never  failed  to  captivate  his  audience  just  as  the 
rustic  beauty  and  simplicity  of  Indiana  were  afterward 
reflected  in  the  ballads  and  public  readings  of  the  poet. 
"Eagerly  I  devoured  all  myths,  popular  melodies,  folk 
tales  and  ballads — these  made  my  music,"  said  Ole 
Bull.  He  is  a  short-sighted  student  indeed  who  can 
not  find  a  similar  influence  in  the  development  of  the 
Hoosier  Poet. 

Stories  of  Ole  Bull  were  in  the  air  and  the  effect 
was  to  stimulate  Riley's  enthusiasm  to  hear  him,  to 
the  point  of  determination.  There  was  then  no  life  of 
the  Norwegian.  "We'll  write  one,"  said  Riley.  He 
prepared  a  sketch  which  he  carried  about  in  his  "reti 
cule"  and  later  laid  away  for  safe  keeping  in  a  trunk. 
"I  did  not  need  the  sketch,"  said  he,  "to  quicken  a  pas 
sion  for  music.  I  already  had  that.  What  I  needed  was 
assurance  and  hope.  If  Ole  Bull  had  wrought  great 
things  from  humble  beginnings,  perhaps  I  could.  He 
was  self-taught.  He  played  his  own  pieces.  Coming 
under  the  influence  of  Paganini  in  Paris,  he  definitely 
adopted  the  career  of  a  violinist.  I  was  hopeful  enough 
— call  it  a  foolish  dream,  if  you  will — to  believe  a  like 
fortune  would  attend  me." 

To  Riley  there  was  something  alluring  in  the  Ole 
Bull  testimonials.  Many  were  printed  in  western 
papers,  "a  rattling  good  one,"  said  he,  "by  George 
William  Curtis,"  who  had  lifted  the  master  violinist 
to  a  pedestal  beside  that  of  Jenny  Lind.  "Critics," 
said  Curtis,  "might  dash  their  heads  against  Ole  Bull 
at  leisure,  the  public  heart  would  follow  him  with  ap 
plause  because  he  played  upon  its  strings  as  upon  those 
of  the  violin.  His  nature  sympathized  with  the  mass 
of  men.  He  was  so  full  of  life  and  overflowing  with 


172  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY:  ' 

vigor  that  he  would  impart  that  sympathy  at  all 
hazards." 

There  was  "a  darling  tribute"  by  Lydia  Maria  Child. 
"Ole  Bull  played  four  strings  at  once,"  she  wrote.  "The 
notes  were  tripping  and  fairy-like  as  the  song  of  Ariel. 
He  made  his  violin  sing  with  a  flute-like  voice,  and 
accompany  itself  with  a  guitar,  gentle  and  musical  as 
the  drops  of  the  rain.  How  he  did  it  I  know  as  little 
as  I  know  how  the  sun  shines,  or  the  spring  brings 
out  its  blossoms." 

Such  language  to  the  heart  of  youth  was  electrical. 
The  purpose  to  hear  the  master  violinist  became  a  con 
suming  fire.  Twice  Ole  Bull  came  to  large  cities  of  the 
West,  but  they  were  too  far  away.  Riley  had  not  yet 
solved  the  problems  of  dress  and  long  distance  trans 
portation.  "His  old  friend,  Poverty,"  said  an  Adel- 
phian,  "was  sticking  closer  to  him  than  a  brother.  He 
still  enjoyed  the  luxury  of  borrowed  clothing;  and  the 
misfits,  or  tightfits,  worn  sometimes  with  a  Greeley 
plug,  reminded  us  of  a  dandy.  Silver  and  gold  he  had 
none.  All  he  had  to  offer  was  poetry."  Happily  he  did 
not  have  to  ride  a  long  distance  to  hear  the  Master. 

The  winter  and  spring  of  1872  was  for  Indianapolis 
a  season  of  platform  kings.  Wendell  Phillips  came  in 
January  to  talk  on  "Courts  and  Jails."  He  was  fol 
lowed  by  J.  G.  Holland  on  "The  Social  Undertow,"  and 
he  by  Josh  Billings  on  "What  I  Know  about  Hotels." 
Then  came  Robert  Collyer  with  "The  Personality  and 
Blunders  of  Great  Genius,"  and  Mark  Twain  with 
"Passages  from  Roughing  It."  All  these  Riley  passed 
by. 

One  day  when  all  things  were  feeling  the  tonic  of 
the  spring,  the  following  announcement  appeared  un 
der  " Amusements"  in  the  Indianapolis  Daily  Sentinel: 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED         173 
ACADEMY  OF  Music 

THE  WORLD-RENOWNED  VIOLINIST 

OLE  BULL 
(Assisted  by  Eminent  Artists) 

IN  GRAND  CONCERT 
TUESDAY  EVENING,  APRIL  16  (1872) 

To  Riley  the  announcement  was  like  the  south  wind 
blowing  over  spring  flowers.  Outwardly  he  was  happy, 
but  "inwardly,"  said  he,  "my  life  had  been  a  bleak  De 
cember.  Something  was  tugging  away  at  the  core  of 
existence  and  I  did  not  know  what  it  was.  I  only  knew 
that  the  mystery  of  it  meant  misery  to  me."  His  soul 
was  burning  within  him.  He  was  peering  into  the 
darkness,  like  the  author  of  the  "Raven,"  wondering, 
fearing,  doubting,  dreaming  dreams  no  mortal  ever 
dared  to  dream  before.  He  was  yearning  for  some 
knowledge  of  his  mission. 

At  the  Academy  of  Music,  however,  the  "misery  of 
existence"  faded.  "Leaning  forward  to  catch  the  first 
strains  from  the  harp  of  gold,"  said  Riley,  "I  was  glad 
as  a  lover  among  the  sheaves  of  harvest  meadows. 
In  imagination  I  saw  Ole  Bull  behind  the  curtain  draw 
his  violin  from  its  ebon  case,  tune  and  hold  it  close  to 
his  breast,  poising  the  bow  in  his  outstretched  hand 
like  a  magician's  wand.  I  could  almost  squeeze  fra 
grance  from  the  tunes  before  the  curtain  was  rolled 
up."  It  did  not  matter  to  Riley  that  he  had  an  in 
ferior  seat.  What  did  he  care?  Ole  Bull  had  sold  his 
last  shirt  to  hear  Paganini,  and  had  been  content 
with  a  seat  in  the  topmost  gallery  in  Paris  to  hear 
Malibran. 

At  last  the  golden  moment  came.  There  on  a  Hoosier 
stage  the  rapt  Musician  stood,  the  silver  of  sixty  win- 


174  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

ters  on  his  brow,  the  dew  of  youth  in  his  heart, — stood 
there  just  as  Longfellow  had  said: 

"Blue-eyed,  his  aspect  blithe, 
His  figure  tall  and  straight  and  lithe, 
And  every  feature  of  his  face 
Revealing  his  Norwegian  grace ; 
A  radiance  streaming  from  within, 
Around  his  eyes  and  forehead  beamed, — 
The  Angel  with  the  violin, 
Painted  by  Raphael,  he  seemed." 

All  that  Longfellow  had  said  of  the  Norwegian  was 
only  a  faint  reflex  of  what  he  was.  His  soul  was  in 
his  music.  The  violin  talked  for  him.  He  played  it 
because  he  loved  it.  Riley's  own  interpretation  of  the 
hour,  a  memory  written  years  after,  was  brief,  but 
charged  with  feeling: 

"Why  it  was  music  the  way  he  stood, 
So  grand  was  the  poise  of  the  head  and  so 
Full  was  the  figure  of  majesty ! — 
One  heard  with  the  eyes,  as  a  deaf  man  would, 
And  with  all  sense  brimmed  to  the  overflow 
With  tears  of  anguish  and  ecstasy." 

He  played  "A  Fantasie  on  Lily  Dale,"  "The  Car 
nival  of  Venice,"  and  "My  Old  Kentucky  Home" 
with  variations.  Chief  interest  centered  in  "The 
Mother's  Prayer"  which  was  played  and  heard  with  the 
deepest  emotion.  What  seemed  so  miraculous  was  the 
discovery  that  the  extraordinary  man  played  the  most 
difficult  selections  "with  the  ease  of  a  common  fiddler 
playing  a  jig  or  hornpipe."  And  such  sustained  per 
fection — he  played  three  or  four  parts  without  a  hint 
of  discordant  note.  Occasionally  his  music  was  ca 
pricious  ;  as  some  said,  "he  resorted  to  tricks  with  his 
instrument,"  but  never  for  an  instant  was  it  wanting 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          175 

in  the  poetry  of  his  interpretations.  The  performance 
was  a  combination  of  strength  and  love  and  "that," 
said  Riley,  "makes  a  miracle  any  time  in  any  land." 
He  played  as  if  he  had  just  found  a  violin,  played  as 
Emerson  said  he  played  in  Boston — "the  sleep  of  Egypt 
on  his  lips." 

The  criticism  Riley  particularly  emphasized  was 
that  Ole  Bull's  music  "went  to  the  heart  of  the  musi 
cally  ignorant  and  carried  the  educated  by  storm" — 
just  as  his  own  public  readings  were  destined  to  do  in 
the  famous  afterwhiles.  He  felt  like  calling  the  grand 
old  artist  "the  only  violinist."  The  encores  (the  "Last 
Rose  of  Summer,"  "The  Nightingale,"  and  "Home, 
Sweet  Home")  were  inexpressibly  lovely.  "  'The  Ar 
kansas  Traveler/  "  said  the  reporter,  "was  played  with 
such  rollicking  abandon  that  the  audience  broke  all  re 
straint  and  drowned  the  sound  of  the  instrument  with 
applause.  A  happier  audience  never  left  the  Academy 
of  Music."  Riley  went  out  "feeling  that  something 
beautiful  had  passed  that  way — something  more  beau 
tiful  than  anything  else,  like  the  dream  of  dawn  or  the 
silence  of  sundown." 

He  returned  to  Greenfield — as  he  said — "a  gentleman 
of  good  family  and  great  expectations."  He  was  flushed 
and  exultant.  "Music  was  the  climax  of  the  soul."  The 
great  violinist  was  the  sole  object  of  his  thoughts.  "Did 
you  meet  him?"  asked  his  friends.  "Why  should  I?" 
was  the  prompt  rejoinder.  "You  don't  have  to  shake 
hands  with  a  man  to  know  him.  Don't  you  know  how 
friends  are  made  ?  Fellowship  exists  whether  we  meet 
or  not.  I  have  known  Ole  Bull  all  my  life."  Leaving 
some  of  the  wiseacres  to  doubt  his  sanity,  he  hastened 
to  his  room.  He  drew  the  Ole  Bull  "Sketch"  from  his 
"reticule"  and  read  it  again.  His  resolution  to  be  a  vio- 


176  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

linist  had  received  such  impetus  that  nothing — to  his 
way  of  thinking — could  break  it.  "Hope  told  a  flat 
tering  tale."  She  pointed  out  the  resemblance  in  his 
life  to  the  early  struggles  of  Ole  Bull  for  recognition. 
Similarity  ran  back  to  childhood.  There  was  no  prom 
ise  for  Ole  Bull  in  the  schoolroom  as  there  had 
been  none  for  "Bud"  Riley.  "Take  to  your  fiddle 
in  earnest,  my  boy,"  the  old  Norway  rector  had 
said;  "don't  waste  your  time  in  school."  Ole  Bull's 
genius  refused  positively  to  go  into  a  straight  jacket. 
How  had  he  learned  to  play?  God  had  taught  him — 
it  was  said — by  a  process  as  simple  as  that  of  the  mock 
ing  bird.  When  a  child  he  had  seen  in  a  meadow  a 
delicate  bluebell  swinging  in  the  wind ;  in  his  fancy  he 
heard  it  ring  while  the  soft  voices  of  the  waving  grass 
accompanied  it.  "I  know  what  he  heard,"  said  Riley, 
and  so  promptly  did  he  accent  the  value  of  his  opinion 
by  relating  incidents  in  his  own  experience,  that  lovers 
of  the  beautiful  never  for  an  instant  doubted  his  word. 
After  the  immediate  enthusiasm  over  the  concert  had 
subsided,  Riley  bethought  himself  of  the  road  to  suc 
cess.  He  went  back  of  Ole  Bull  to  Paganini  for  a 
motto  which  he  narrowed  down  to  "Work,  solitude  and 
prayer."  In  the  "British  Books,"  excellence  in  paint 
ing  and  sculpture  was  chiefly  the  result  of  incessant 
application  and  he  was  convinced  that  music  demanded 
like  concentration.  With  Ole  Bull  and  Paganini  it 
meant  practice  twelve  hours  a  day.  Neverthe 
less,  he  was  not  intimidated.  He  would  sound  the  possi 
bilities  of  music,  and  to  this  end  he  played  on  every 
violin  he  could  borrow.  When  the  owner  declined 
to  let  him  take  it  away  from  the  house,  he  remained 
and  played  in  the  kitchen.  To  use  his  own  words 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          177 

he  "even  accepted  Invitations  to  canter  over  the 
strings  while  dancing  feet  jarred  the  china  ware 
and  windowpanes."  Friends  remember  that  he 
leaned  lovingly  over  the  violin  and  that  the  strains  were 
lyrically  sweet.  "There  was  a  room  in  the  old  Dunbar 
House  in  Greenfield,"  said  an  Adelphian,  "where  he 
played  hour  by  hour  to  drown  discordant  sounds  such 
as  the  grist-mill,  egg-beaters,  and  the  rattle  of  the 
street."  To  such  he  opposed  "Home,  Sweet  Home," 
"The  Cottage  by  the  Sea,"  and  "The  Suwannee  River" 
with  variations  of  his  own  improvising.  Ole  Bull  had 
composed  his  own  music  and  he  would  do  the  same. 

Thus  he  practised  and  thus  he  forecast  his  future 
in  the  musical  world  with  prospect  of  reward  when  he 
was  sorrowfully  confronted  with  the  result  of  an  acci 
dent,  which,  trivial  as  it  seems,  can  not  be  overlooked 
since  it  actually  did  turn  and  alter  his  career,  as  trifles 
frequently  do  in  this  world,  where  a  gnat,  according 
to  Thackeray,  often  plays  a  greater  part  than  an  ele 
phant,  where  a  mole-hill  can  upset  an  empire.  "Great 
God!"  exclaimed  the  old  Greenfield  Commercial,  "on 
what  a  slender  thread  hang  everlasting  things !"  The 
accident  was  a  caprice  of  the  wind.  The  Commercial 
further  observed  that  winds  are  born  to  be  capricious. 
They  ramble  at  will  among  trees  and  poets 

"And  love  and  cherish  and  bless  to-day 
What  to-morrow  they  ruthlessly  throw  away." 

What  the  wind  really  did — to  say  it  curtly — was  to 
slam  a  door  on  Riley's  thumb.  "The  wind  was  mad," 
said  he,  "stark,  staring  mad ;  running  over  and  around 
town,  howling  and  whooping  like  a  maniac." 

At  first  the  injury  was  not  considered  serious,  al 
though  he  had  to  dress  it  daily  and  carry  his  hand  in 


178  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

a  sling.  But  when  afterward  he  devoted  time  daily  to 
the  violin,  the  wounded  finger  complained,  the  pain 
increasing  as  he  increased  the  hours  of  practice.  One 
night,  all  alone,  it  was  sadly  borne  in  upon  him  that  he 
was  not  to  be  a  violinist.  "You  say  a  short  thumb  is 
a  little  thing,"  he  once  remarked.  "I  say  it  is  a  big 
thing — it  was  then."  When  he  fully  realized  he  could 
never  grip  the  violin  as  he  had  seen  the  Master  Musi 
cian  do,  the  sense  of  disappointment  was  akin  to  that 
which  would  come  over  a  man  were  some  familiar 
mountain-top  to  sink  suddenly  and  forever  from  sight. 
Riley  was  more  sensitive  than  many  of  his  con 
temporaries.  What  others  suffered  lightly  he  suffered 
keenly.  It  was  destiny's  way  of  making  him  a  poet — 
to  him  then  a  heavy-laden,  shadowy  way.  A  French 
man  remarked  with  a  smile,  that  the  whole  face  of  the 
world  would  probably  have  been  changed  had  Cleo 
patra's  nose  been  shorter.  "That  remark  should  not 
provoke  a  smile,"  said  Riley.  "The  sage  should  have 
said  it  with  gravity;  it  was  the  truth.  Walter  Scott, 
when  a  child,  sprained  his  foot.  Ivanhoe  and  the  other 
Waverley  novels  were  dependent  on  that  sprain.  Had 
Scott  not  been  lame  he  would  have  gone  into  the  army. 
The  gates  of  great  events  swing  on  small  hinges." 

Only  the  few  who  despise  the  day  of  small  things 
will  smile  at  Riley's  grief.  The  many  will  share  it, 
for  reasons  made  clear  to  them  by  turning-points  in 
their  own  lives.  They  will  perceive  what  has  been 
often  observed,  that  defects  are  made  useful  to  men. 
Ignorant  of  ourselves,  Shakespeare  tells  us,  we  often 
beg  our  own  harms,  which  the  wise  powers  deny  us 
for  our  good.  Subsequently  when  Riley  began  doing 
his  life  work  with  the  pen,  he  saw  that  the  angel  of 
adversity  had  denied  him  the  realization  of  one  dream 


JAMES   WHITCOMB   RILEY 
Age  twenty-two 


OLK  r.t  i  i..   i  HI;  MASTKK  MTSICIAN 
From  photograph    Hi  Icy  carried  as  a  mascot 


WHILE  THE  MUSICIAN  PLAYED          179 

that  she  might  bless  him  with  the  fulfillment  of  a 
greater.  Obedient  to  the  angel's  prompting,  he  wrote 
his  popular  poem,  "Kissing  the  Rod."  Ever  after,  his 
letters  to  sorrowing  friends  harmonized  with  the  mes 
sage  of  that  poem.  "No  mortal  condition,"  he  once 
wrote,  "is  better  than  the  one  God  seems  to  weigh  you 
down  with.  In  my  own  case  I  am  coming  every  day  to 
see  clearer  the  gracious  uses  of  adversity. — Simply  it 
is  not  adversity. — It  is  the  very  kindest — tenderest — 
most  loving  and  most  helpful  touch  of  the  hand  Divine." 

Though  yielding  to  the  decree  of  fate,  Riley's  in 
terest  in  music  never  abated.  The  man  who  held  that 
painting  is  the  poetry  of  color,  sculpture  the  poetry  of 
form,  and  music  the  poetry  of  sound,  could  not  at  any 
time  of  his  career  be  far  from  the  heart  of  the  musical 
world.  His  debt  to  great  composers  was  always  ac 
knowledged.  For  years  after  the  concert  he  idolized 
Ole  Bull,  and  carried  his  photograph  in  his  "reticule" 
on  reading  tours  as  an  omen  of  good  fortune.  No  one 
understood  better  than  he  the  love  of  Ole  Bull  for  his 
instrument.  When  he  escaped  from  a  burning 
boat  on  the  Ohio,  Riley  was  "happy  as  a  hummingbird." 
The  picture  of  the  Master  hugging  his  violin  as  he  ap 
proached  the  Kentucky  bank  of  the  river  was  never 
effaced  from  Riley's  memory.  "I  would  have  thrown 
up  my  hands,"  said  he,  relating  the  story  to  a  railroad 
conductor,  "but  Ole  Bull  was  a  Norseman;  he  had 
courage.  If  ever  you  have  a  wreck  and  find  in  the 
debris  the  unidentified  body  of  a  man  with  a  fiddle  in 
his  arms,  bury  it  without  further  inquiry  as  the  re 
mains  of  Ole  Bull." 

In  those  days  of  "strange  pale  glamour,"  although 
the  Argonaut  did  not  see  it,  he  was,  nevertheless,  as 
cending  more  rapidly  than  he  dreamed  to  the  niche  he 


180  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

was  destined  to  fill.  Cromwell  was  not  a  poet,  but  he 
gave  to  the  inscrutable  ways  of  destiny  a  poetic  inter 
pretation  when  he  remarked  that  one  "never  mounts 
so  high  as  when  he  knows*  not  whither  he  is  mount 
ing." 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ATTORNEY  AT  LAW 

THAT  the  Hoosier  Poet  ever  seriously  thought  of 
groping  among  the  technicalities  of  the  law  for 
the  Golden  Fleece  seems  to  lovers  of  verse  unbe 
lievable.  They  are  aware  (according  to  the  myth) 
that  there  was  a  wild  sea  to  sail  over,  dragons  to  fight 
and  gods  to  assauge  before  the  hero  could  bring  the 
Fleece  home ;  but  for  an  Argonaut  of  the  poetic  order 
to  pommel  felons  in  court  and  be  pommeled  by  oppos 
ing  lawyers  seems  a  perversion  of  gifts.  Riley  did  not 
practise  law,  but  he  had  friends  who  were  bent  on  his 
doing  so. 

As  has  been  seen,  his  first  ambition  was  to  be  a  baker. 
At  the  age  of  five  his  joy  was  complete  when  he  could 
fashion  a  custard  pie.  His  father,  however,  desired 
him  to  be  a  lawyer  and  that  desire  preceded  the  ambi 
tion  to  be  a  baker.  It  was  another  one  of  those  erro 
neous  paternal  dreams  of  a  profession  for  a  gifted  son. 
To  enumerate  them  would  make  a  book: — Schiller 
forced  to  study  law  till  his  dislike  for  it  approached 
absolute  disgust.  Longfellow,  writing  his  father  that 
the  legal  coat  would  not  fit  him  and  the  father  insisting 
that  he  wear  it.  "Nature,"  said  the  son,  "did  not  de 
sign  me  for  the  bar,  or  the  pulpit,  or  the  dissecting 
room."  The  father  of  Ole  Bull  striving  to  make  a  law 
yer  of  a  violinist,  and  Lowell's  father  exacting  a  prom 
ise  from  his  son  that  he  would  "quit  writing  poetry 
and  go  to  work."  For  twenty  years  Reuben  Riley 

181 


182  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

dreamed  of  the  law  for  his  son  Whitcomb.  He  dressed 
the  boy  in  a  blue  coat  and  trousers,  and  carried  him  to 
the  old  log  court  house,  lifted  him  to  a  seat  in  a  win 
dow,  and  was  overjoyed  when  his  brother  attorneys 
poked  the  little  fellow  in  the  ribs  and  called  him  "Judge 
Riley."  The  son  tells  of  the'  incident  in  his  own  inimi 
table  way:  "A  peculiar  man  was  my  father.  About 
the  third  thing  I  remember  was  that  he  made  my  first 
suit  of  clothes.  I  was  three  years  old  at  the  time — too 
young,  in  fact,  to  be  taken  out  of  pinafores,  but  my 
father  insisted  that  I  should  have  a  pair  of  pants.  My 
mother  protested,  but  father  would  have  his  way.  He 
stepped  off  quietly  to  a  store  and  bought  the  cloth  with 
out  saying  a  word.  Then  he  cut  out  the  suit  and  made 
it  with  his  own  hands.  The  coat  was  a  marvel  of  art. 
Imagine  it,  a  little  three-year-old  with  long  pants,  a  vest 
with  a  red  back  and  buckle,  and  cut  like  a  man's.  Then 
he  took  me  day  after  day  to  the  courtroom  where  at 
that  impressionable  age  I  saw  many  people  with  many 
eccentricities.  Imagine  the  queer  figure  I  must  have 
cut  among  them  with  my  hair  white  as  milk  and  my  face 
freckled  as  a  guinea  egg." 

"It  was  my  father's  ambition,"  Riley  remarked  on 
another  occasion,  "to  make  me  a  lawyer,  and  I  struggled 
to  satisfy  his  wishes;  but  bless  you,  that  profession 
was  not  my  bent.  I  could  not  learn  the  stuff  fast  enough 
to  forget  it."  The  jumble  in  his  mind  was  accented  by 
the  confusion  of  tongues  in  the  courtroom.  Attorneys 
might  see  wisdom  in  the  proceedings  but  to  him  all  was 
"dense  with  stupidity."  The  charge  of  a  rural  justice 
to  the  jurymen  (a  story  Riley  sometimes  repeated) 
illustrates  his  confusion:  "Gentlemen,  if  you  believe 
what  the  counsel  for  the  plaintiff  says,  you  will  find  for 
the  plaintiff.  If  you  believe  what  the  counsel  for  the 


ATTORNEY  AT  LAW  183 

defendant  says,  you  will  find  for  the  defendant.  But  if, 
like  me,  you  believe  neither  the  counsel  for  the  plaintiff 
nor  the  counsel  for  the  defendant,  the  Lord  only  knows 
what  you  will  find." 

Riley  in  a  courtroom  was  an  illustration  of  Schiller's 
story  of  Pegasus  at  the  cart  and  the  plow.  Nature  does 
not  design  poets  for  such  employment.  But  give  them 
range  for  the  exercise  of  their  genius,  as  Schiller  points 
out,  and  they  will  rise  kingly,  unfold  the  splendor  of 
their  wings  and  soar  toward  heaven.  What  had  Riley  to 
do  with  the  wilderness  of  code  and  precedent? 

"In  the  nice  sharp  quillets  of  the  law, 
Good  faith !    he  was  no  wiser  than  a  daw." 

Washington  Irving  was  an  adept  in  the  profession  com 
pared  with  Riley.  A  friend,  referring  to  Irving' s  ad 
mission  to  the  bar,  remarked  that  "he  knows  a  little 
law."  "Make  it  stronger,"  said  the  attorney — "darn 
little."  What  a  farce,  Riley,  in  substance,  once  observed 
(drawling  the  quotation  from  a  favorite  novel), 
a  bench-leg  poet  among  members  of  the  bar, 
tripping  one  another  up  on  slippery  precedents, 
groping  knee-deep  in  technicalities,  running  their 
goat-hair  and  horse-hair  warded  heads  against  walls 
of  words,  and  making  a  pretense  of  equity  with 
serious  faces ;  think  of  me  in  a  fog  of  bills,  cross-bills, 
answers,  rejoinders,  injunctions,  affidavits,  issues,  ref 
erences  and  reports — think  of  me  floundering  in  a 
courtroom  with  that  mountain  of  costly  nonsense  piled 
before  me! 

To  Riley  the  law  seemed  a  device  to  pull  wires,  an 
effort  to  dodge,  evade  and  prevaricate — "the  suppres 
sion  of  truth,  a  juggling  with  justice."  It  was  the  devil 
take  the  attorney.  As  a  brother  poet  expressed  it : 


184  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"Here  lies  John  Shaw 
Attorney  at  law, 

And  when  he  died 

The  devil  cried, 
Give  us  your  paw 
John  Shaw 
Attorney  at  law." 

"The  epitaph  contained  more  truth  than  humor" — 
such  was  Riley's  caustic  opinion  when  in  an  intolerant 
mood.  "The  law  will  never  help  the  race,"  he  was  wont 
to  repeat,  "till  it  hangs  men,  not  for  what  they  do,  but 
for  what  they  are." 

"The  civil  law"  screamed  Martin  Luther,  "good 
God!  what  a  wilderness  it  is  become!"  "Mark  the 
words,"  added  Riley,  when  he  read  them;  "there  is  a 
call  for  house  cleaning  when  a  preacher  exclaims 
against  it.  You  can't  get  truth  by  cross-examination. 
An  attorney  can  curl  you  up  on  the  witness  stand  like 
a  burnt  boot." 

Thus  he  would  go  on  till  some  of  his  friends  in  the 
profession  would  hit  back.  "Stop  your  flings  at  the 
law,"  said  a  notary;  "in  one  week  I  have  seen  enough 
in  the  life  of  an  author  to  shame  the  devil  in  his  palm 
iest  days !" 

"So  we  plow  along,"  returned  Riley,  "so  we  wag 
through  the  world,  half  the  time  on  foot  and  the  other 
half  walking." 

"He  never  studied  law,"  said  one  of  Riley's  early 
friends.  In  a  sense,  that  is  true.  He  read  but  he  never 
studied.  He  lost  interest  when  he  discovered  that 
"Blackstone  would  not  rhyme  with  Minnesinger."  He 
was  never  admitted  to  the  bar;  he,  of  course,  never 
had  a  client.  "My  chief  asset,"  he  once  moaned,  "con 
sisted  of  hopes  for  the  future — and  hopeless  they 


ATTORNEY  AT  LAW  185 

were.  I  saw  myself  dwarfed  and  poor  as  Daniel 
Quilp,  my  office  like  his,  a  little  dingy  box  on  a 
side  street  in  Tailholt,  with  nothing  in  it  but  an  old 
rickety  desk  and  two  wood  blocks  for  chairs,  a  hat-peg, 
an  ancient  almanac,  an  inkstand  with  no  ink,  and  the 
stump  of  one  pen,  and  an  old  clock  with  the  minute 
hand  twisted  off  for  a  toothpick." 

"He  never  studied  law!"  The  following  anecdote 
seems  to  confirm  the  observation :  When  making  a  new 
book,  Riley  sometimes  sent  out  a  ferret  for  fugitive 
poems.  While  serving  him  in  this  capacity,  a  stenog 
rapher,  searching  through  the  old  files  of  a  newspaper 
found  the  poem,  "To  the  Judge,"  which  the  poet  had 
entirely  forgotten — could  not  recall  that  he  ever  wrote 
it.  Two  lines  of  one  stanza  (as  printed)  ran  as  fol 
lows: 

"Can't  you  arrange  to  come  down? 
Pigrouhole  Blackstone  and  Kent!" 

"Pigrouhole !  Pigrouhole !"  repeated  Riley.  "Who  is 
Pigrouhole?  I  was  a  May-day  failure  at  the  law,  I 
know,  but  I  ought  to  know  who  Pigrouhole  is."  He 
looked  in  an  English  cyclopedia,  thinking  Pigrouhole 
was  a  contemporary  of  Blackstone.  Then  he  searched 
a  French  dictionary,  thinking  the  barrister  with  the 
vexatious  name  might  be  a  Frenchman.  At  night  he 
called  in  a  lawyer  friend.  "You  are  an  attorney,"  said 
he;  "tell  me  who  Pigrouhole  is."  "Let  me  see  the 
lines,"  said  his  friend,  puzzled  over  the  strange  name. 
He  read  them  a  second  time — 

"Can't  you  arrange  to  come  down? 
Pigrouhole  Blackstone  and  Kent! — 
Can't  you  forget  you're  a  Judge 
And  put  by  your  dolorous  frown 
And  tan  your  wan  face  in  the  smile  of  a  friend — 
Can't  you  arrange  to  come  down?" 


186  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"You  mean  pigeonhole''  said  his  friend ;  "your  word  is 
a  verb.  Read  your  poem — you  are  asking  the  Judge, 
the  friend  of  your  youth,  to  quit  the  dust  of  the  town 
for  the  country." 

"Let  us  pray,"  added  Riley. 

The  only  time  Riley  ever  had  "a  case  in  court,"  he 
was  both  defendant  and  counsel  for  defendant.  It  was 
a  farce  but  deserves  a  place  in  his  annals  for  its  saving 
grace  of  humor.  Sometime  prior  to  his  study  of  Black- 
stone,  while  returning  in  a  band  wagon  from  a  concert, 
a  dispute  arose  with  one  of  the  band  boys  which  ended, 
said  one  of  them,  "in  a  fair  display  of  courage 
and  violence."  His  antagonist  turned  upon  him  with 
such  scurrilous  terms  as  "thief"  and  "liar."  "I  could 
lick  you  for  saying  that,"  said  Riley,  "if  I  could  spare 
the  time."  It  turned  out  that  he  had  to  spare  the  time. 
In  the  scuffle  which  followed,  he  pitched  his  foe  out  of 
the  wagon.  The  poet  recalls  the  incident  in  his  lines 
on  "The  Strange  Young  Man."  For  obvious  reasons 
he  calls  the  wagon  a  "jumper "-sled,  and  disguises  him 
self  in  the  chap  with  the  dyed  mustache, 

"Who  got  whipped  twice  for  the  things  he  said 
To  the  fellows  that  told  him  his  hair  was  red." 

The  offense  being  a  sweet  morsel  for  the  town  marshal, 
Riley  was  accused  of  "assault  and  battery"  and  brought 
before  the  Mayor  for  trial.  The  defendant  asked  for 
jury  trial,  and  six  "law-abiding  freeholders"  were 
selected  to  decide  his  fate.  He  chose  for  counsel  an 
eccentric  young  fellow  of  the  county,  who  had  been 
established  in  a  pretentious  looking  office  with  a  new 
library,  by  his  father,  a  wealthy  farmer.  The  father 
had  placed  money  to  his  son's  credit  in  the  bank  and 
told  him  "to  cut  loose."  The  "Squire"  (for  so  his 
cronies  called  him)  like  the  defendant  was  short  on 


ATTORNEY  AT  LAW  187 

clients  as  well  as  knowledge  of  the  law.  Riley's  was 
his  first  case — and  his  last. 

At  the  trial  the  spectators  consisted  chiefly  of  the 
"Squire's"  friends  (so  called),  loafers  around  his 
office,  who  for  some  time  had  dreamed  of  getting  their 
money's  worth  from  his  hour  of  confusion.  When 
the  lank  and  lean  "Squire"  appeared  with  his  arms  full 
of  law  books,  they  gave  him  their  full  measure  of  ap 
plause,  which  was  promptly  met  with  the  Mayor's 
threat  to  "clear  the  galleries"  if  repeated.  After  wit 
nesses  had  been  examined  and  counsel  for  plaintiff  had 
finished,  the  "Squire"  rose  to  make  his  maiden  speech. 
"While  he  was  getting  himself  together  for  the  great 
est  effort  of  his  life,"  said  one  of  the  cronies,  "Riley 
rose  before  the  jury  and  began  the  argument."  He 
reversed  the  situation,  made  the  "Squire"  the  defend 
ant  and  himself  the  counsel. 

"Sit  down,"  said  the  "Squire,"  pulling  Riley  by  the 
arm;  "sit  down;  I'm  your  lawyer." 

"Never  mind,  'Squire/  "  returned  Riley  soothingly ; 
"be  calm ;  I'll  clear  you  all  right."  Turning  again  to 
the  jury,  Riley  was  "about  to  lay  the  wreath  of  praise 
on  an  untarnished  name,"  when  the  "Squire"  stepped 
before  him  more  imperative  than  ever — "Sit  down," 
repeated  the  "Squire,"  "sit  down — you're  crazy!" 

"Your  honor,"  said  Riley,  addressing  the  Mayor, 
"I  do  not  make  a  business  of  insanity.  If  I  did,  you 
would  not  let  me  run  at  large  in  the  streets  of  Green 
field."  Turning  to  the  "Squire,"  he  was  more  vehe 
ment:  "Sir,  your  imputation  of  lunacy  I  spurn  with 
loathing.  Though  American  born,  the  blood  of  Wallace 
and  Bruce  runs  in  my  veins ; 

'And  if  thou  said'st  I  am  not  peer 
To  any  lord  in  Scotland  here, 
Lowland  or  Highland,  far  or  near, 
Lord  Angus,  thou  hast  lied !' " 


188  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Contrary  to  all  expectations,  the  "Squire"  sat  down. 
Riley  continued,  deftly  directing  the  thought  of  his 
hearers  to  himself  as  culprit  and  defendant:  "My 
Lords  and  Gentlemen,"  (turning  to  the  jury)  "we  have 
arrived  at  this  awful  crisis ; 

'Absent  thee  from  felicity  awhile, 
In  this  harsh  world  draw  thy  breath  in  pain, 
To  hear  my  story.' ' 

Having  bowed  to  the  jury,  he  made  a  pretense  of 
addressing  them  at  length  by  recalling  the  court  lan 
guage  of  Sampson  Brass  in  Old  Curiosity  Shop.  "It 
is  my  duty,  sirs,"  he  said,  smiling  roguishly,  "in  the 
position  in  which  I  stand,  and  as  an  honorable  member 
of  the  legal  profession — the  first  profession  in  this 
country,  sirs,  or  in  any  other  country,  or  in  any  of  the 
planets  that  shine  above  us  at  night  and  are  supposed 
to  be  inhabitated — it  is  my  duty,  sirs,  as  an  honorable 
member  of  that  profession  to  throw  a  little  light  on  a 
disagreeable  phase  of  civilization.  I  would  offer  some 
reflections,"  he  continued  solemnly,  "on  the  poor  crab- 
tree  of  human  nature,  its  weakness  and  the  difficulties 
attending  its  obedience  to  moral  perceptions."  But 
scarcely  had  he  launched  his  argument  when,  the  whole 
scene  ending  in  an  uproar  of  laughter,  the  Mayor  dis 
missed  the  case  and  cleared  the  room. 

The  poet's  "lyre"  of  after  years,  Bill  Nye,  was  con 
vinced  this  story  of  "Pegasus  in  court"  was  not  a  tradi 
tion,  "not  by  a  mile,"  said  he,  "and  a  Dutch  mile  at 
that.  How  do  I  know?  Because  Riley  is  so  provokingly 
silent  about  it.  Mention  it  and  he  is  as  dignified  as 
the  king  of  clubs;  he  is  as  grave  as  the  private  ceme 
tery  of  a  deaf  and  dumb  asylum." 

Riley  entered  his  father's  law  office  in  the  spring  and 


ATTORNEY  AT  LAW  189 

remained  until  September,  1875.  He  gave  the  law  a 
second  trial  the  year  following,  "but  that,"  he  said,  "did 
not  count/'  It  counted  for  literature  however,  as  will 
be  seen  in  a  subsequent  chapter.  Not  all  the  time  was 
devoted  to  law  books — "those  inexpressive  looking 
books/'  as  Dickens  told  him,  "that  never  had  anything 
to  say  for  themselves."  An  hour  or  two  each  day  he 
studied  the  figures  of  rhetoric,  punctuation  and 
prosody,  as  taught  in  Harvey's  Grammar.  "As  to 
syntax,"  said  he,  "there  was  nothing  to  it.  I  soon  dis 
covered  that  metaphor  and  hyperbole  were  my  long 
suit.  Prosody  was  a  barren  waste — dactyls,  spondees, 
iambics  and  trochaics  the  acme  of  confusion.  Measure 
and  rhythm  I  had  by  nature — the  names  I  did  not 
need."  What  was  more  significant  was  the  new  inter 
pretation  he  attached  to  a  familiar  quotation,  one  he 
had  sometimes  seen  on  the  blackboard  in  the  school 
room.  The  hour  had  arrived  to  put  it  in  practice.  He 
began  seriously  to  think  for  himself: 

....     "One  good  idea 
But  known  to  be  his  own — 
Better  than  a  thousand  gleaned 
From  fields  by  others  sown." 

In  July  the  law  student's  meditations  were  seriously 
and  tragically  interrupted.  A  negro  was  captured  in 
the  woods  near  Blue  River,  brought  to  Greenfield 
and  hung  in  the  Fair  Ground.  Riley  was  not 
one  of  the  mob  but  was  persuaded  the  next  morning 
to  go  out  and  see  the  body.  "I  would  give  a  United 
States  mint,"  he  said,  "to  efface  that  picture  from  my 
memory.  Reynolds  was  persuaded  by  Boswell  to  at 
tend  the  execution  of  a  robber  at  Newgate.  The  people 
criticized  him — and  rightly.  What  has  art  or  poetry 


190  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

to  do  with  the  murder  of  a  human  being!"  To 
make  the  lesson  doubly  impressive,  Riley  went  on  to 
recall  the  hanging  of  an  outlaw  in  the  Red  Buck  coun 
try  and  how  an  editor  had  "duly  reported  it  all  and 
sounded  a  note  of  warning,"  as  told  by  Bret  Harte. 
"But  the  beauty  of  that  mid-summer  morning,"  Harte 
had  added,  "the  blessed  amity  of  earth  and  air  and  sky, 
the  awakened  life  of  the  free  woods  and  hills,  the  joy 
ous  renewal  and  promise  of  Nature,  and  above  all,  the 
infinite  Serenity  that  thrilled  through  each, — that  was 
not  reported,  as  not  being  a  part  of  the  social  lesson." 
To  Riley's  way  of  thinking,  "laws  were  too 
frequently  made  to  trap  the  innocent."  The  gen 
tlemen  of  the  courts,  as  he  saw  it,  were  work 
ing  at  the  wrong  end  of  the  problem.  "Let  the  jail  go 
the  way  of  the  dungeon.  Give  men  better  food;  give 
them  better  guides,  better  fathers  and  mothers,  better 
homes  when  lying  in  their  cradles."  Nor  could  the 
people  fold  their  arms  under  the  plea  of  innocence. 
"Like  Paul,"  he  said,  "they  stand  by,  consenting  to  the 
death."  This  view  so  tragically  wrought  upon  him 
in  those  student  days  was  later  expressed  in  "His 
Mother,"  a  poem  he  thought  Boards  of  Pardon  and 
others  interested  in  penal  institutions  had  strangely 
overlooked.  Briefly  the  thought  in  it  is  this:  The 
Law  takes  the  life  of  a  wayward  boy  for  a  brutal 
offense,  the  mother  comes  for  her  dead — her  own  son, 

"God's  free  gift  to  her  alone 
Sanctified  by  motherhood. 

"I  come  not  with  downward  eyes, 
To  plead  for  him  shamedly, — 
God  did  not  apologize 
When  He  gave  the  boy  to  me." 


ATTORNEY  AT  LAW  191 

Thus  in  anguish  the  mother  cries  out  against  the  "red- 
handed"  crime  of  the  state.  Since  the  Law  has  killed 
both  mother  and  son,  how  will  it  face  the  Judge  of  all 
the  earth  in  the  Hereafter? 

"For  days,"  said  Riley,  recalling  the  gloom,  "the 
memory  of  the  lynching  hung  over  the  law  office  like 
a  London  fog."  His  native  town  had  trampled  without 
remorse  upon  a  mother's  love — the  most  sacred  and 
precious  emotion  in  life.  "A  London  fog!"  he  moaned. 
"The  bewildering  stages  of  the  law  and  the  staggering 
roar  of  human  beings  when  they  turn  their  fury  into 
the  screech  of  the  mob — w'y>  a  London  fog  is  but  mist 
over  a  frog  pond  compared  to  that!"  There  was  fog 
everywhere,  fog  up  and  down  Brandywine,  fog  on  the 
lowlands  and  on  the  heights,  fog  creeping  through  the 
houses,  fog  above  the  church  steeples,  fog  in  the  eyes 
and  hearts  and  minds  of  men,  fog  on  the  prospect  of 
human  improvement.  It  was  the  outcry  of  outraged 
feeling,  the  pang  of  despair — and  it  lasted  for  a  fort 
night  after  the  lynching.  Then  succeeded  a  period  of 
unrest.  As  the  weeks  wore  away  the  law  student 
began  to  sigh  again  for  the  unhackneyed  existence  of 
outdoor  life,  something  wild  and  full  of  adventure.  He 
was  ready  to  spread  his  sails  wherever  any  vagrant 
breeze  might  carry  him.  "Would  that  woes  might 
end,"  he  murmured, 

"That  life  might  be  all  poetry 
And  weariness  a  name." 

Indoor  employment  brought  a  decline  in  health.  The 
doctors  said  he  could. not  live  unless  he  got  more  sun 
shine.  Friends  advised  him  to  travel.  "They  might 
as  well,"  said  he,  "have  advised  me  to  promote  a  rail 
road.  I  couldn't  buy  a  ticket  to  the  county  line."  A 


192  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

few  wiseacres  said,  "Stick  to  the  law;  it  will  bring  you 
wealth  and  fame" ;  but  health  was  not  to  be  weighed  in 
the  balance  with  profit  from  a  profession. 

"Health,  it  beats  wealth; 
And  what  will  fame  profit  us 
When  the  same  comes  to  us 
In  our  sarcophagus?" 


CHAPTER  IX 

WITH  THE  WIZAKD  OIL  COMPANY 

ROMANTIC  history  in  all  times  has  its  legends 
of  wandering  heroes  who  delight  to  make  their 
beds  under  starry  skies.    Again  and  again  they 
beguile  the  roadsides  and  airy  heights  with  a  scanty 
supply    of    provisions    and    an    inexhaustible    stock 
of  ballads  and  songs.     They  follow   "the   traveling 
mountains  of  the  sky."    Their  hearts  respond  wildly 
to  the  "Song  of  the  Road"  - 

"For  one  and  all,  or  high  or  low, 
Will  lead  them  where  they  wish  to  go ; 
And  one  and  all  go  night  and  day 
Over  the  hills  and  far  away." 

The  zestful  "Song"  was  in  the  air  over  Green 
field  the  last  week  of  summer,  1875.  Pegasus, 
lean,  thirsty  and  hungry,  had  been  unhitched  from 
the  post  in  front  of  the  law  office.  The  gipsy 
spirit  was  abroad.  There  were  calls  from  Fort- 
ville,  Pendleton,  Middletown,  Newcastle,  Farmland, 
Winchester,  Union  City,  and  towns  in  Ohio,  and  the 
law  student  was  eager  to  answer  them.  The  Argo- 
nautic  propensity  returned — the  desire  to  wrestle  with 
the  ways  of  the  world  and  give  his  fancy  range  in  new 
lands.  He  literally  longed  to  have  no  settled  place  of 
abode,  to  live  and  wander  about  from  place  to  place, 
sleeping  at  night  in  barns  or  at  the  roadside.  Nature 
intended  him  to  be  a  vagabond.  If  the  worst  came  to 

193 


194  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

the  worst,  he,  like  Washington  Irving,  could  turn 
stroller  and  pick  up  a  living  along  the  highways. 

"Humanity  in  its  developing  stage,"  an  early  friend 
wrote  him,  "is  a  good  deal  like  yeast — liable  to  bubble 
up  and  boil  over  without  giving  you  warning."  He 
was  in  the  bubbling  stage.  The  hour  had  come  to  go — 
he  was  resolved  on  flight.  But  how  fly?  Fancies  are 
free — but  fares  cost  money. 

"It  is  my  opinion,"  said  Riley,  recurring  to  those 
days,  "that  the  ways  for  our  feet  are  found — not  made. 
We  strut  about  like  peacocks  and  boast  of  our  achieve 
ments  and  fame; 

Is  it  by  man's  wisdom  that  the  hawk  soareth, 
And  stretcheth  her  wings  toward  the  south? 

There  I  was  in  Greenfield,  Uue  as  the  zenith  over  my 
head,  no  money,  no  way  to  leave  town  except  walk, 
and  right  out  on  the  National  Road  the  dust  was  flying 
and  the  fates  fashioning  my  way  of  escape.  Down 
that  road  came  the  Wizard  Oil  Company,  a  band  of 
musicians  and  comedians  in  a  traveling  chariot  drawn 
by  horses  that  cantered  and  ran  as  if  they  were  bal 
lasted  with  quicksilver.  The  manager  of  the  company 
had  discharged  a  man  at  Knightstown.  I  took  the  va 
cant  place,  mounted  to  a  seat  beside  the  manager  and 
bowled  away  to  Fortville." 

The  company,  hailing  from  Lima,  Ohio,  had  been  an 
annual  visitor  to  Greenfield  since  1870.  The  local 
Adelphian  Band  had  caught  the  theatrical  spirit  and 
gone  straight  to  the  hearts  of  Greenfielders  with  an 
original  number  entitled  "The  Wizard  Oil  Man."  The 
"Wizards"  had  mingled  freely  with  Greenfield  musi 
cians,  sometimes  helping  out  in  serenades  and  playing 
at  socials  and  church  entertainments.  They  usually 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY      195 

appeared  the  week  of  the  Fair,  but  Riley  had  no  assur 
ance  that  they  would  reappear  in  1875.  "All  was 
hanging,"  he  remarked,  "on  what  the  wind  said." 

Lovers  of  their  native  heath  may  be  inclined  to  re 
proach  Riley  for  leaving  Greenfield  with  such  glee. 
Truth  to  tell,  never  before  nor  afterward  did  he  leave 
with  such  satisfaction.  He  was  sick  in  body  but  also 
sick  at  heart.  He  was  a  fugitive  from  the  "London 
fog."  Before  leaving  he  went  to  bid  a  chum  good-by. 
"Quit  the  town,"  said  he  half  seriously;  "stay  here 
and  they'll  swing  you  to  a  tree  in  the  Fair  Ground." 
But  the  joys  of  the  road  soon  restored  his  spirits  to  a 
hopeful  view  of  the  human  species.  Within  two  weeks 
his  affection  for  the  old  town  was  as  warm  as  ever. 

Before  he  reached  Fortville  he  was  in  a  roguish 
vein.  He  was  one  of  "the  jolly  party  of  chirping  vaga 
bonds."  The  Wizard  Company  gave  him  a  brimming 
welcome,  "smiled  all  round  in  a  gust  of  friendship," 
glad  to  roam  the  country  with  such  a  merry-maker. 
"He  waded  immediately,"  said  one  of  the  comedians, 
"boot-top  deep  into  our  affections.  We  laughed  at  his 
stories;  everybody  humored  him,  everybody  bet  on 
him."  Before  nightfall  his  heart  was  running  riot 
with  pleasure  as  in  the  "Standard  Remedy"  days  three 
years  before.  He  "snapped  at  verse  as  ravenously  as 
if  he  were  a  crafty  lawyer  nipping  the  unguarded  ad 
mission  of  a  witness."  His  talk  was  in  superlatives. 
Like  Stevenson,  he  proclaimed  himself  a  bird  of  Para 
dise.  He  was  lured  forward  and  backward  by  an  un 
bridled  imagination.  He  shared  the  destiny  of  all  the 
living — he  chased  his  favorite  phantom.  The  highway 
fairly  scintillated  with  jingle. 

Feigning  he  was  a  thousand  miles  from  home  and 
calling  back  down  the  dusty  road  to  a  resident  of  his 


196  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

native  town,  who  had  just  swished  by  the  wagon  like 
a  "highway  comet,"  he  craved  a  special  favor: 

"If  you  ever  live  to  see 
The  sunny  town  of  Greenfield — take  a  message  there 

for  me, 
Take  a  message  and  a  token  to  some  distant  friends  of 

mine, 
For  I  was  born  at  Greenfield,  the  year  of  Forty-nine." 

At  Pendleton  he  came  from  a  barber  shop  with: 

"Greenfield  barbers  cut  my  hair 
And  Pendleton  and  Hewitt — 
But  none  kin  cut  it  anywhere 
Like  Fortville  Frank  kin  do  it." 

Near  Newcastle,  passing  a  bareheaded  camper  at  the 
roadside  who  was  curling  his  mustache  before  a 
broken  mirror,  he  tossed  his  nomadic  brother  a  sam 
ple  of  his  dialect — 

"I  washed  my  face  and  combed  my  hair 
Keerf ully  over  the  bald  place  there ; 
Put  on  a  collar — fixed  up  some, 
And  went  to  church — I  did — by  gum !" 

Pausing  a  moment  near  the  site  of  an  old  trading 
point  where  tradition  said  Red  Men  had  been  burnt  at 
the  stake,  he  mourned  their  fate.  However  they  had 
not  died  in  vain.  It  was  something  that  comedians 
could  stand  on  mother  earth  where  the  Red  martyrs 
had  perished, 

"Where  from  their  ashes  may  be  made 
The  violets  of  their  native  land." 

It  was  great  joy  to  pen  capricious  lines.  Great  pleas 
ure,  too,  to  make  pencil  sketches,  a  row  of  sunflowers 
for  instance,  "chinning  the  fence"  like  happy  children 
at  the  roadside. 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY      197 

Driving  right  and  left  over  undulating  counties  with 
September  skies  above — it  was  like  a  cruise  on  a  bil 
lowy  sea.  Fairy  isles  were  ever  looming  up  mistily 
in  the  far-away.  The  Argonaut  was  steeped  in  an 
atmosphere  of  dreams — "such  gracious  intervals  for 
reflection,"  he  remarked  of  the  time,  "such  endless 
hours  of  languor."  He  was  a  lover  fanned  by  the 
warm  winds  of  the  deep — ; 

"And  so  we  glide 
Careless  of  wave  or  wind, 
Or  change  of  any  kind, 
Or  turn  of  any  tide. 

Where  shall  we  land?" 

After  a  cruise  of  two  weeks  he  landed  at  Union  City, 
on  the  state  line,  "a  fussy  old-hen-of-a-town,"  he 
wrote  two  years  later,  "clucking  over  its  little  brood 
of  railroads,  as  though  worried  to  see  them  running 
over  the  line,  and  bristling  with  the  importance  of  its 
charge."  The  immediate  view  of  the  place  was  almost 
entirely  concealed  from  him  by  a  big  square-faced  hotel 
— not  an  attractive  town  although  it  had  "one  division 
of  the  Sons  of  Temperance,  one  factory,  two  news-, 
papers,  two  banks,  two  hotels,  three  lodges,  five 
churches  and  nine  dry  goods  stores  and  groceries." 
Notwithstanding  its  unsightly  appearance,  Union  City 
promptly  took  a  seat  in  the  family  circle  of  Riley  an 
nals.  Here,  within  a  few  weeks  "in  the  rear  of  the 
spacious  and  brightly  illuminated  store,  Bower's  Em 
porium,"  he  found  material  for  his  most  popular  sketch 
in  prose,  "A  Remarkable  Man." 

On  arrival,  he  immediately  took  time  to  answer  a 
letter  from  his  Greenfield  chum,  J.  J.  Skinner,  who  of 
all  the  friends  left  behind  was  the  one  most  likely  to 
send  good  news  from  home.  His  friend  was  not  living 


198  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

on  "the  shadowy  side  of  the  street."  The  letter,  omit 
ting  "foreign  items/'  is  Riley's  own  account  of  the 
two-weeks'  outing: 

Union  City,  Sept.  14,  1875. 
Dear  John: 

We  have  just  driven  in  here  and  it  is  good  in  finding 
your  letter  in  waiting  for  me.  It  is  full  of  news  "and 
that  of  the  very  best."  I  am  having  first  rate  times 
considering  the  boys  I  am  with.  They,  you  know,  are 
hardly  my  kind,  but  they  are  pleasant  and  agreeable 
and  with  Doctor  Townsend  for  sensible  talk  occasion 
ally,  I  have  really  a  happy  time.  We  sing  along  the 
road  when  we  tire  of  talking,  and  when  we  tire  of 
that  and  the  scenery,  we  lay  ourselves  along  the  seats 
and  dream  the  happy  hours  away  as  blissfully  as  the 
time  honored  baby  in  the  sugar  trough.  I  shall  not 
attempt  an  explicit  description  of  all  that  I  have  passed 
through,  but  will  give  a  brief  outline.  We  "struck" 
Fortville  first,  as  you  already  know — stayed  over  night 
and  came  near  dying  of  loneliness.  There  is  where  I 
"squeeled"  on  street  business,  that  is,  that  portion  of 
it  where  I  was  expected  to  bruise  the  bass  drum.  Well, 
I  have  been  "in  clover"  ever  since,  and  do  what  I 
please  and  when  I  please.  I  made  myself  thoroughly 
solid  with  "Doxy"  (the  playful  patronymic  I  have 
given  the  Doctor)  by  introducing  a  blackboard  system 
of  advertising  which  promises  to  be  the  best  card  out. 
I  have  two  boards  about  three  feet  by  four,  which 
during  the  street  concert,  I  fasten  on  the  sides  of  the 
wagon  and  letter  and  illustrate  during  the  performance 
and  through  the  lecture.  There  are  dozens  in  the  crowd 
that  stay  to  watch  the  work  going  on  that  otherwise 
would  drift  from  the  fold  during  the  drier  portion  of 
the  Doctor's  harangue.  Last  night  at  Winchester  I 
made  a  decided  sensation  by  making  a  rebus  of  the  well- 
known  lines  from  Shakespeare — 

"Why  let  pain  your  pleasures  spoil, 
For  want  of  Townsend's  Magic  Oil?" — 

with  a  life-sized  bust  of  the  author ;  and  at  another  time 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       199 

a  bottle  of  Townsend's  Cholera  Balm  on  legs,  and  a  very 
bland  smile  on  its  cork,  making  a  "Can't  come  it"  jest- 
ure  at  the  skeleton  Death,  who  drops  his  scythe  and 
hour  glass  and  turns  to  flee.  Oh!  I'm  stared  at  like 
the  fat  woman  on  the  side-show  banner.  Sunday  night 
we  stayed  at  Morristown,  a  little  place  with  two  stores 
and  one  church,  I  shan't  include  hotel,  although  the 
proprietor  of  the  coop  we  lodged  in  insisted  on  calling 
it  that.  There  was  nothing  left  us  here  but  to  plunge 
into  the  vortex  of  dissipation  the  inhabitants,  or  na 
tives  rather,  indulge  themselves;  and  so  we  went  to 
church, 

"And  heard  the  Parson  pray  and  preach, 
And  heard  his  daughter's  yoice 
Singing  in  the  village  choir, 
For  we  had  no  other  choice." 

We  gave  them  a  little  music  in  the  morning  in  our  glee 
at  leaving  the  town,  and  far  back  in  the  perspective 
I  caught  the  flutter  of  rags  on  a  tow-headed  boy. 
I  breathed  a  silent  prayer  for  my  deliverance.  Ah,  my 
boy !  the  feeling  of  the  breeze  on  my  face. 

We  shall  stay  here  during  the  Fair  doing  street  work 
at  night  only  in  the  city.  I  was  here  you  know  some 
two  or  three  years  since  and  I  expect  to  find  a  girl 
or  two  who  will  still  remember  me,  but  it  doesn't  really 
matter  whether  they  do  or  not,  for  a  smile  or  two  sel 
dom  fails  to  "bring  them  down" — especially  Fair  time. 
I  have  met  several  of  the  boys  I  used  to  know.  I  am  in 
for  a  good  time.  You  see  I  have  nothing  to  do  but 
my  boards  and  I  sometimes  drift  away  from  the  wagon 
for  hours  and  "Doxy,  white  as  snow,  never  kicks." 

The  law  student  had  now  been  away  from  home  a 
fortnight.  He  was  returning  to  pleasures  of  the  road. 
The  relief  from  the  gloomy  solitude  of  the  law  office — 
how  could  he  sufficiently  thank  Heaven  for  that.  Little 
Nell  with  the  dream  of  fields  and  woods  and  riversides 
ahead  was  not  more  joyous. 

"I  shall  never  forget,"  said  Riley,  "how  ashamed  I 


200  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

was  in  Fortville  to  have  a  cousin  of  mine  see  me  beating 
the  bass  drum  with  that  show.  But  that  was  the 
blur  of  a  moment.  It  turned  out  just  as  I  had  fore 
seen.  The  Doctor  was  a  good  fellow  and  he  helped  me 
amazingly.  By  the  time  we  struck  Ohio  I  was  strong 
and  well.  He  had  a  way  of  giving  a  healthy  moral  twist 
to  what  we  were  doing.  His  black  chargers  were  the 
apple  of  his  eye.  'Brave  horsemanship,  my  boy/  he 
would  fondly  say  as  we  bowled  along,  'gives  rise  to 
sparks  of  resolution  and  wakens  the  mind  to  noble 
action.' " 

Doctor  Townsend  was  a  pioneer  in  his  line,  "a  gem 
in  the  rough,"  his  comedians  said,  "as  loving  and  kind 
in  heart  as  any  man  living."  He  traveled  in  good  style. 
In  addition  to  his  fine  horses,  his  equipment  consisted 
of  a  covered  wagon  with  side  seats  for  his  company — 
and  always  an  ample  supply  of  the  "Cure  Alls,"  the 
"life  savers,"  such  as  Magic  Oil,  Sarsaparilla,  Liver 
Pills,  Cholera  Balm,  and  Cough  King.  Of  musical 
instruments  there  were  the  bass  drum,  the  bass  horn, 
banjo,  violin,  tubia,  and  B-flat  cornet. 

The  Doctor  was  a  "proficient  B-flat,"  and  a  good 
singer  of  either  bass  or  soprano.  "Riley  was  a  good 
singer,"  said  a  comedian,  "but  would  not  risk  his  voice 
or  reputation  in  the  open  air."  He  was  content  to 
teach  other  members  of  the  company  rare  old  songs 
such  as  "Our  Uncle  Sam,"  and  at  the  evening  perform 
ance  charm  his  hearers  on  the  violin  with  such  old- 
timers  as  "The  Devil's  Jig,"  "Fisher's  Hornpipe,"  and 
"The  Arkansas  Traveler"  on  four  strings,  "with 
apologies  to  Ole  Bull." 

The  company  started  for  the  next  town  in  the  morn 
ing,  arranging  to  reach  it  at  noon  just  as  the  "scholars" 
came  from  school.  The  toot  of  a  horn  woke  up  the 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       201 

farm-houses  along  the  road  and  circulars  were  scattered 
broadcast.  At  the  edge  of  town  the  band  began  to 
play  and  parade  the  streets.  The  Doctor  gave  two 
"lectures"  a  day,  one  in  the  afternoon,  but  the  principal 
one  at  night,  when  they  lit  the  torch  lamps  and  brought 
out  the  decorations.  In  county-seats,  when  it  was  Fair 
week,  the  people  came  in  throngs.  When  they  crowded 
the  performers,  Riley  with  his  blackboards  and  cartoons 
was  elevated  to  a  position  on  the  wagon  to  divide 
honors  with  the  Doctor.  In  Ohio,  Riley  was  introduced 
as  the  "Hoosier  Wizard,"  and  the  performance  he  gave 
with  his  voice  and  brush  was  remembered  when  other 
features  of  the  show  were  forgotten.  "He  was  the 
center  of  light,"  it  was  said, — 

"The  weary  had  life,  and  the  hungry  had  bliss, 
The  mourners  had  cheer, — and  lovers  a  kiss." 

Fair  week;  the  throng  was  always  interesting.  The 
weather  being  warm,  the  women  and  girls  wore  white 
dresses,  and,  said  a  spectator,  "they  were  ornamented 
with  the  furbelows  of  fashion."  "When  the  moon  rose 
to  blend  her  light  with  the  decorations  and  costumes," 
said  Riley,  "I  was  transported  to  the  land  of  the 
Arabian  Nights.  It  was  an  Aladdin  show."  Sometimes 
he  recited  "Tradin*  Joe,"  then  entitled  "Courting  on  the 
Kankakee."  Sometimes  he  appeared  in  a  character 
sketch,  assuming  the  role  of  an  old  man  or  a  school 
boy.  Occasionally,  turning  up  his  coat  collar  and  wrap 
ping  a  red  bandana  about  his  neck,  he  entertained  his 
hearers  from  the  steps  of  the  wagon,  introducing  an 
original  ballad,  followed  by  a  comic  song.  "The  bal 
lads,"  said  he,  years  after,  "came  from  incidents  and 
experiences  on  the  road.  They  were  written  on  dull, 
hot  Sundays  in  selfish  country  towns  where  the  church 


202  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

bells  barked  at  strangers  while  lazy  men  lolled  round  in 
narrow  bits  of  shade." 

At  Fort  Recovery  where  the  rain  drove  the  come 
dians  to  a  hall  above  a  drug  store,  the  lads  and  lassies 
danced  to  the  music  of  Riley's  violin.  At  Covington, 
where  they  remained  several  days,  entertainments 
were  given  on  the  top  floor  of  the  new  school  building. 
At  another  point  the  Doctor  succeeded  in  renting  a 
church  for  his  show. 

The  "Wizards"  were  the  Troubadours  of  1875.  Like 
their  brothers  in  sunny  France,  their  wits  were  sharp 
ened,  their  versatility  broadened  and  their  store  of 
songs  and  anecdotes  replenished  by  what  they  saw  and 
heard.  Their  merry-making  was  alluring.  "Bright 
eyes  flashed  for  them  and  many  times  picket  gates 
swung  softly  open  as  they  approached." 

They  reached  the  Magic  Oil  laboratory  the  first  week 
in  October.  For  the  rest  of  the  season  Lima  was  to 
be  the  hub  of  their  travels.  Fifty  or  sixty  miles  out 
touched  the  rim  of  the  wheel.  Again  Riley  cast  a 
backward  look  to  Greenfield.  The  Forty-Niner  was  a 
man  in  years  but  in  spirit  a  boy.  He  was  not  yet  de 
tached  from  the  influence  of  his  "salad  days,"  as  in 
stanced  in  extracts  from  a  letter  written  on  his  birth 
day  at 

Lima,  Ohio,  October  7,  1875. 
Dear  John :     (To  J.  J.  Skinner.) 

I  shall  not  enter  into  any  particulars  with  regard  to 
the  pleasure  with  which  your  letter  was  received — let 
it  suffice  you  to  know  that  I  gorged  it  "blood  raw,"  I 
was  so  hungry  to  hear  from  you.  What  a  gust  of  news 
it  contained ;  it  almost  raised  my  hair — two  first  class 
sensations  spiced  with  little  breezy  notes  which  I  de 
voured  with  special  relish.  I  thought  this  place  with 
out  an  equal  in  regard  to  its  "increase  in  crime,"  but 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       203 

I  must  knock  under  for  the  present  for  old  Greenfield. 
A  saloon  keeper  was  shot  here  last  week  and  no  particu 
lar  stir  made  about  it,  nor  the  man  missed.  There  may 
be  an  ordinance  though  that  all  saloon  keepers  be  killed 
when  found  without  muzzles.  And  just  here  let  me 
remark  that  what  little  prosperity  I  now  enjoy  in  the 
shape  of  a  plug  hat  is  an  intimation  of  my  estrange 
ment  from  the  saloon  keeper.  May  God  help  me  on  my 
good  way. 

I  "stand  in"  with  the  best  men  of  the  town  and  am 
rapidly  growing  in  public  favor.  I'll  be  out  in  book 
form  yet.  I  wish  you  were  here  to  room  with  me  at 
the  nobbiest  little  boarding  house  in  the  world — every 
thing  is  perfect  even  to  the  old  lady,  the  hostess,  who 
capers  under  the  jocund  patronymic  of  "Aunt  Jane." 
Speaking  of  boarding  houses,  how  is  the  Test  House? 
I  would  like  to  strike  old  13  to-night  with  its  enchanted 
bed.  I  need  something  of  that  kind  now.  I  think  of 
you  often  and  of  the  rare  old  times  we  had,  and  I 
still  nurse  a  hope  that  we  may  have  a  grand  rehearsal 
of  them  again.  Say  to  Angie  that  she  haunts  me;  I 
saw  her  in  a  dream  the  other  night  and  she  had  wings 
seven  feet  long  and  I  was  just  going  to  ask  her  to  fly 
some  when  the  breakfast  bell  rang  and 

She  vanished  as  slick 

As  a  slight  of  hand  trick." 

As  the  Wizard  Company  moved  on  through  western 
Ohio,  Riley's  interest  in  towns  subsided.  His  want  of 
curiosity,  which  distinctly  characterized  his  mature 
years,  seems  to  date  from  this  time.  When  the  com 
pany  made  ado  over  historical  things,  he  remained  pas 
sive.  Some  said  he  was  in  a  trance.  He  was,  if  by 
trance  is  meant  (as  he  wrote) 

'The  harvest  of  a  quiet  eye 
That  broods  and  sleeps  upon  the  heart." 

Fort  Recovery,  a  center  of  maneuvers  by  "Mad 
Anthony  Wayne";  Piqua,  or  Pickaway,  the  Indian 


204  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

village  on  Mad  River,  the  birthplace  of  Tecumseh; 
Greenville,  the  site  of  the  Great  Indian  Treaty  where 
"speeches  were  made  by  Red  Men,"  the  comedians  told 
him,  "that  would  have  done  honor  to  the  civilized  legis 
lative  assemblies  of  the  world" ;  Sidney,  Belief ontaine, 
Van  Wert,  Findlay — all  were  passed  with  provoking 
indifference.  "He  was  listless  and  drowsy,"  said  his 
friends,  "as  the  buzzard  that  swung  around  upon  the 
atmosphere."  But  when  they  reached  Upper  San- 
dusky  he  woke  up.  "Now,"  said  he,  "you  have  come 
to  a  town  with  history  worth  recording."  It  was  hal 
lowed  ground.  Charles  Dickens,  on  his  American  tour, 
had  passed  that  way  by  stage  from  Cincinnati  to  the 
Lakes.  Riley  wanted  to  see  the  old  Log  Inn  where  Dick 
ens  stayed  over  night,  the  "large,  low,  ghostly  room  in 
which  he  slept  with  his  dressing-case  full  of  gold, 
gleaned  from  public  readings."  He  wanted  to  see  the 
Indians  with  shaggy  ponies  that  reminded  the  novelist 
of  English  gipsies — see  where  the  novelist  traveled  in 
the  thunder-storm  at  night — and  the  illusions  in  the 
black-stump  clearings.  It  was  too  late  to  see  the  cordu 
roy  road  where  "the  ponderous  carriage  fell  from  log 
to  log,"  affording  the  novelist  the  sensation  he  might 
have  in  an  omnibus  if  attempting  to  go  to  the  top 
of  a  cathedral.  It  is  good  description  if  read  with 
but  half  the  interest  Riley  bestowed  on  it: — 

"The  stumps  of  trees,"  says  Dickens,  "are  a  curious 
feature  in  American  travelling.  The  varying  illusions 
they  represent  to  the  unaccustomed  eye  as  it  grows 
dark,  are  quite  astonishing  in  their  number  and  reality. 
Now  there  is  a  Grecian  urn  erected  in  the  center  of  a 
lonely  field ;  now  there  is  a  woman  weeping  at  a  tomb ; 
now  a  very  common-place  old  gentleman  in  white  waist 
coat,  with  thumb  thrust  into  each  armhole  of  his  coat ; 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       205 

now  a  student  poring  on  a  book ;  now  a  crouching  ne 
gro;  now  a  horse,  a  dog,  a  cannon,  an  armed  man;  a 
hunch-back  throwing  off  his  cloak  and  stepping  forth 
into  the  light.  They  were  often  entertaining  to  me," 
so  the  novelist  continues,  "as  so  many  glasses  in  a 
magic  lantern,  and  never  took  their  shapes  at  my  bid 
ding,  but  seemed  to  force  themselves  upon  me,  whether 
I  would  or  no ;  and  strange  to  say,  I  sometimes  realized 
in  them  counterparts  of  figures  once  familiar  to  me  in 
pictures  attached  to  childish  books,  forgotten  long  ago. 

"It  soon  became  dark,  however.  The  trees  were  so 
close  together  that  their  dry  branches  rattled  against 
the  coach  on  either  side,  and  obliged  us  all  to  keep 
our  heads  within.  It  lightened,  too,  for  three  whole 
hours ;  each  flash  being  very  bright,  and  blue  and  long ; 
and  as  the  vivid  streaks  came  darting  in  among  the 
crowded  branches,  and  the  thunder  rolled  gloomily 
above  the  treetops,  one  could  scarcely  help  thinking 
that  there  were  better  neighborhoods  at  such  a  time 
than  the  thick  woods. 

"At  length,"  Dickens  concludes,  "between  ten  and 
eleven  o'clock  at  night,  a  few  feeble  lights  appeared 
in  the  distance,  and  Upper  Sandusky,  an  Indian  village, 
where  we  were  to  stay  till  morning,  lay  before  us." 

Upper  Sandusky  afforded  Riley  an  opportunity  for 
the  rambles  of  imagination.  Dickens'  description  of 
the  thunder-storm  he  enjoyed  thoroughly.  He  could 
match  it  with  a  personal  experience  while  traveling 
by  night  through  an  Indiana  forest.  The  black-stump 
clearings  with  their  illusions  in  the  twilight  (not  the 
identical  fields,  but  others  like  them)  were  there  in  the 
vicinity  of  Sandusky,  awakening  the  same  sensations 
in  Riley  that  pleased  the  novelist.  His  heart  went  back 
to  his  boyhood  days  and  his  unshaken  faith  in  fairies. 


206  JAMES  WHITCOMB  KILEY 

"That  faith,"  said  he,  when  he  began  to  maintain  a 
fairy  interest  in  his  work,  ""had  a  great  deal  to  do  in 
turning  my  mind  to  poetry.  In  my  poems  I  have  tried 
to  get  back  into  the  spirit  of  those  dreams.  My  father 
did  not  have  a  large  library,  but  a  choice  one,  and 
among  the  books  were  some  that  he  forbade  me  to  read. 
They  were  books  of  fairy  tales  and  mythology.  Soon 
as  he  was  out  of  sight,  however,  I  was  again  sporting 
with  the  elves  and  fairies.  It  was  a  wonderful  world; 
I  was  charmed  with  it  because  I  thought  it  was  real.  By 
reading  the  tales  I  developed  my  imagination.  I  saw 
fairies  and  elves  everywhere.  I  mark  this  as  the  hap 
piest  period  of  my  life,  and  I  wish  now  that  I  could 
believe  in  those  little  sprites,  and  that  the  charm  had 
never  been  dispelled.  Why,  I  would  watch  a  stump  at 
a  distance  for  hours,  as  Dickens  did,  and  imagine  I 
could  see  a  little  boy  like  myself  running  about  it,  and 
then  he  would  disappear  and  I  would  go  and  pry  around 
to  find  the  magic  stairway  which  led  down  to  Pluto's 
realm." 

While  Riley  grew  less  enthusiastic  over  the  towns, 
his  interest  in  the  Wizard  Company  did  not  diminish, 
particularly  in  the  proprietor.  Each  day  he  and  the  Doc 
tor  grew  more  companionable.  They  cracked  jokes,  it 
was  said,  "with  the  freedom  of  the  seas."  And  they 
recalled  fairy  tales — one  with  a  personal  application. 
The  Doctor  was  the  "Puppet  Showman,"  a  traveling 
theater  director,  and  his  comedians  the  puppets  whom 
he  called  before  the  curtain  after  the  play  and  hauled 
from  town  to  town  in  his  wagon.  There  was  the  mys 
tery  about  the  piece  of  iron  that  fell  through  the  spiral 
and  became  magnetic  (as  told  in  the  tale) .  "How  does 
it  happen  ?  Nobody  knows.  The  spirit  comes  upon  the 
iron  but  whence  does  it  come?  It  is  a  miracle. 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       207 

So  it  is  with  mankind.  People  are  made  to  tumble 
through  the  spiral  of  this  world,  and  the  spirit  comes 
upon  them,  and  there  stands  a  Napoleon  or  Luther,  or 
a  man  of  that  kind.  Men  are  miracles ;  the  whole  world 
is  a  series  of  miracles  but  we  in  our  pride  or  ignorance 
call  them  every-day  matters." 

All  ignorantly,  seeing  all  as  through  a  glass  darkly, 
Riley  was  tumbling  through  the  spiral  of  events  in  his 
own  time  as  Napoleon  and  Luther  in  their  time.  And 
those  events  (call  it  miraculous  if  you  like — Riley  did) , 
those  events,  uncouth,  unconventional,  rudimental, 
magnetized  him  with  the  spirit  of  harmony. 

Thus  outside  the  university  was  he  being  educated, 
not  for  purposes  of  the  law  or  statesmanship  but  for 
flights  in  the  realm  of  song.  Faithful  to  the  Muse,  he 
was  obeying  impulses  received  from  his  favorite 
"Painters  and  Sculptors."  The  old  books  had  lost  none 
of  their  impelling  power.  Romney  at  the  same  age, 
twenty-six,  was  classed  among  the  illiterate,  yet  knowl 
edge  he  certainly  had.  Like  him  Riley  was  gifted  with 
native  talents,  a  keen  eye,  and  a  fertile  imagination. 
The  Unseen  Powers  were  keeping  him  in  constant  touch 
with  people  and  things.  In  short,  they  were  passing 
him  through  "the  spiral  of  this  world."  At  every 
street  corner  and  cross-roads  he  gleaned  something 
from  somebody.  "There  are  no  common  men,"  he  re 
plied  when  blamed  for  association  with  common  folks. 
"I  take  notice  that  Jesus  sought  out  the  so-called  poor 
and  ignorant.  They  were  just  the  kind  of  people  He 
wanted.  They  were  not  poor  or  ignorant  in  His  sight." 
Like  his  father,  Riley  liked  few  things  better  than  a 
talk  with  a  blacksmith,  carpenter  or  farmer — a  section 
boss  or  a  janitor.  He  found  threads  of  gold  in  the 
riffraff.  He  never  entered  a  cabin  or  traveled  in  a 


208  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

farm  wagon,  never  talked  with  a  plowman,  or  loitered 
with  a  weaver  at  the  loom  without  learning 
something  he  did  not  know.  Like  Robert  Burns, 
whose  genius  he  rivaled  in  so  many  ways,  he  "was 
sent  into  the  world  to  see  and  observe ;  he  easily  com 
pounded  with  any  one  who  showed  him  mature  nature 
in  a  different  light  from  what  he  had  seen  before.  The 
joy  of  his  heart  was  to  study  men,  their  manners  and 
their  ways,  and  for  this  darling  object  he  cheerfully 
sacrificed  every  other  consideration." 

"Riley  is  out  making  a  fool  of  himself  somewhere," 
said  a  wiseacre  back  in  Greenfield;  "it  is  his  one  ac 
complishment."  But  Riley  knew  what  he  was  about 
when  he  joined  himself  to  the  Wizard  Oil  Company. 
Good  companion  that  he  was,  he  took  from  them  and 
the  people  along  the  way  more  than  he  gave.  He  found 
opportunity  to  give  expression  to  the  irrepressible  flow 
of  joy  in  his  nature.  As  the  days  passed,  his  soul 
filled  with  tender  sensations.  He  was  "tremblingly 
alive  to  the  beauty  of  everything"  in  nature  and  human 
nature,  "with  faith  in  all  that  was  good  and  enthusiasm 
for  all  that  was  lovely."  Instead  of  regrets,  the  Riley 
wanderings  should  occasion  rejoicing,  for  the  settled 
and  reposed  man  (according  to  Plato)  knocks  in  vain 
at  the  gate  of  Poesy. 

The  author  of  "The  Spirit  of  Poetry,"  college  gradu 
ate  though  he  was,  did  not  divorce  it  from  the  wayward 
days  of  youth.  Riley  prolonged  those  days.  Wherever 
he  found  hearts  filled  with  good-will,  homely  humor 
and  festive  enjoyment,  there  he  found  poetry.  Often 
times  it  was  crude  but  poetry  nevertheless  and  he  was 
always  happy  when  he  found  it  in  obscure  nooks  and 
crevices.  The  stately  garden,  cultivated  and  enhanced 
by  the  hand  of  man,  was  "a  thing  of  beauty"  for  a 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       209 

time,  but  who  would  strip  the  earth  of  its  tangled  for 
ests  and  the  wild  beauty  of  fields  and  woodlands?  At 
a  subsequent  date  in  his  career,  recalling  his  Ohio  days, 
Riley  sought  to  give  a  transcript  of  those  wanderings, 
emphasizing  in  humorous  vein,  the  value  of  poetry.  It 
is  a  prose  fragment — a  few  names  with  which  he  dis 
guised  the  "puppet  showmen," — the  title  and  a  begin 
ning.  "The  scene,"  he  said,  "was  the  second  floor  of  a 
food  joint  in  Ohio."  He  entitled  the  fragment: 

A  Session  of  "THE  SINGING  PILGRIMS." 

MEMBERS  (Mainly  present) 
T.  L.  Wilson  A.  E.  Sargeant 

P.  B.  Miller  Chas.  Marks 

Robt.  McCrea  A.  Hilton 

D.  G.  Lewis  T.  Van  Arden 

M.  W.  Smith  J.  O.  Edgerton 

'     J.  W.  Foxcroft  L.  C.  Graves 

Scene— Back  loft — "The  Little  DORDEMIA"  All-Night 
Restaurant. 

Time,  10  P.  M. — Spread  ordered  for  2  A.  M. 

MR.  LEWIS:  somewhat  timidly,  rising  from  THE 
CHAIR  and  looking  painfully  at  home  in  his  new  posi 
tion  as  president — 

Gentlemen — I — er — that  is : — The  gift  of  Song  is,  as 
you  are  doubtless  aware,  a  divine  gift — a  sacred  gift, 
I  may  say;  a  gift,  in  fact  that  in  whomsoever's  posi 
tion  it  may  rest,  I  care  not,  a  gift,  I  say,  that  should 
be  regarded  by  him — or  her — as  a  hallowed  trust,  at 
once  elevating  and  ennobling.  We  who — are  met  thus 
together  are,  as  I  take  it,  avowedly — of  ourselves,  at 
least — disciples,  and  practitioners — each  in  his  own 
humble  degree — of  this  glorious  art.  This  Glorious  Art, 
I  say,  of — of  Song!  (A  mild  stimulus  of  applause). 


210  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Now  I  am  not  going  to  trespass  upon  time  which  may 
be  much  better  employed  in  the  discussion  of  your 
papers  for  the  evening — (cries  of  "Go  on !"  and  "Come 
off!"  dubiously  blended — the  speaker  bowing  and  con 
tinuing)  ,  but,  giving  way  to  your  generous  encourage 
ment,  I  do  want  to  dwell — for  a  brief  moment  at  least — 
on  Poetry  and  its  true  mission — as,  I  think,  we  should 
most  seriously  consider  it.  Now  I  am,  as  you  know, 
unable,  in  this  way,  to  express  myself  at  all  times  as 
clearly  as  I  would  like — I  can't,  as  you  know,  think  on 
my  feet — • 

MR.  VAN  ARDEN  :  7  could,  if  I  had  them ;  and  would 
"think  on"  them — very  seriously.  (Laughter.) 

MR.  LEWIS  :  Yes.  The  gentleman  might  even  think 
with  them  and  find  it  an  improvement  upon  his  brain 
process.  (Sensation.) 

(This  beginning  of  what  the  "Hoosier  Wizard" 
failed  to  complete  provokes  a  sense  of  something  lost. 
One  breathes  a  sigh  of  regret  that  it  remains  unfin 
ished.  Humorous  literature  might  have  had  a  prose 
sketch  equal  to  his  caricature  of  the  educator  in  "The 
Object  Lesson.") 

The  crisp  days  of  November  found  the  Wizard  Com 
pany  among  the  upper-tributaries  of  the  Great  Miami. 
Although  the  nights  were  icy  and  the  winds  sometimes 
raw  and  vindictive,  Riley  was  inclined  to  continue  the 
voyage.  He  had  regained  health. 

"Still  on  they  went,  and  as  they  went, 
More  rough  the  billows  grew; 
And  rose  and  fell,  a  greater  swell, 
And  he  was  swelling,  too" — 

swelling  in  size  and  weight,  his  heart  swelling  with 
gratitude.     When  the  Company  left  Greenfield,  three 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       211 

months  before,  he  was  called  the  "Little  Man."  Now 
he  was  not  so  small.  The  Doctor  considered  him  a  "Big 
Man" — but  the  comedians  were  ignorant  of  the  Doc 
tor's  meaning.  At  Tippecanoe  City,  Thanksgiving 
week,  they  were  overtaken  by  "Squaw  Winter"  and 
decided  to  return  to  Lima. 

Although  off  the  road,  the  days  at  Lima  were  not 
monotonous.  Riley  declined  to  help  the  Doctor  shingle 
a  house.  "You've  tried  to  make  a  great  many  things 
out  of  me,  Doctor,"  said  he,  "but  you  can't  make  a  car 
penter." 

"Opposed  to  manual  labor?"  asked  the  Doctor. 

"Constitutionally." 

"How  about  painting  signs?" 

"Timely  suggestion;  I  will  stain,  ingrain,  illuminate 
or  bedizen — paint  the  town  vermillion  if  you'll  muzzle 
the  Grand  Jury." 

The  upshot  was  that  Riley,  once  more  in  overalls, 
was  set  to  work  with  a  bucket  of  yellow  paint  in  the 
laboratory.  The  signs  were  fantastic  illuminations  on 
glass,  and  many  set  afloat  the  virtues  of  Magic  Oil  in 
verse.  When  fancies  were  thick-coming  he  wrote 
them  in  rhyme  on  the  wall.  Then  he  made  cartons  for 
bottles.  He  started  in  to  help  the  chemists  prepare 
remedies  for  the  coming  season,  but  could  not  mix  com 
pounds.  As  a  maker  of  worm  lozenges  he  was  a  fail 
ure.  He  worked  when  he  felt  like  it.  He  was  humored 
to  a  degree  that  brought  criticism  from  other  work 
men.  If  the  Doctor  found  Riley  sitting  by  the  stove 
with  his  legs  crossed  and  his  feet  higher  than  his  head, 
he  credited  him  on  the  books  with  an  hour  of  medita 
tion — and  more  verses  on  the  wall.  "As  a  comedian  he 
beats  them  all,"  said  the  Doctor,  referring  to  Riley's 
success  as  an  entertainer  on  the  road.  His  opinion  of 


212  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

him  as  an  advertiser  appears  in  the  following  testi 
monial  : 

C.   M.   TOWNSEND 

Wholesale  Dealer 

and  Proprietor  of 

TOWNSEND'S    MAGIC    OIL,    WORM    CANDY, 
KING  OF  COUGHS,   and   HEADACHE   PILLS. 

No.  171  Market  Street. 
(Lima,  Ohio.) 

I  take  great  pleasure  in  saying  that  James 
W.  Riley  is  the  most  efficient  Advertiser  I  have 
ever  had  in  my  employ.  Throughout  an  engage 
ment  of  four  months'  duration  I  have  found  him 
ever  prompt,  industrious  and  reliable. 

C.  M.  TOWNSEND. 

In  the  laboratory  Riley  formed  an  attachment  for 
James  B.  Townsend,  the  Doctor's  son,  then  a  student 
of  law,  whom  he  met  in  October.  It  was  a  friendship 
at  first  sight.  As  he  sat  with  his  new  friend  by  the 
kitchen  stove,  he  became  interested  in  Buckle's  History 
of  Civilization,  and  De  Tocqueville's  Democracy  in 
America.  Just  what  relation  those  mighty  tomes  have 
to  ballads  and  lyrics  does  not  appear,  but  the  Muse  was 
indulgent.  One  afternoon  while  walking  and  talking 
together,  the  autumn  leaves  whirling  round  them,  they 
looked  seriously  into  their  futures.  Each  was  enter 
ing  the  transitional  stage  of  his  life.  Each  saw 
that  he  was  cut  out  for  something  better.  "The 
work  they  were  doing  was  beneath  them.  They  would 
quit  sign-painting  and  working  on  job  wagons,  for  oc 
cupations  more  worthy  of  their  talents."  They  parted 
in  December,  one  to  become  mayor  of  a  city,  receiver 
for  a  railroad,  and  so  forth ;  the  other,  by  devious  paths, 
to  rise  to  eminence  in  literature. 


THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY 
A  crowd  the  week  of  the  County  Fair 


DONALD  GRANT  MITCHELL 
Editor  of  Hearth  and  Home 


5VITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       213 

James  Townsend  was  reared  in  a  model  American 
home.  While  in  Lima,  Riley  was  an  inmate  of  that 
home.  Thus  he  and  the  family  were  afforded  the  mem 
ory  of  a  rare  and  genial  companionship.  Happily  the 
reader  has  left  to  him  a  picture  of  those  days.  "Riley 
was  a  gentleman,"  said  Mr.  Townsend,  "a  little  odd 
but  never  meaning  any  harm.  He  kept  himself  scrupu 
lously  clean.  He  had  sandy-colored  hair.  His  mus 
tache  of  the  same  hue  was  long  and  heavy  and  when  he 
played  the  violin  it  spread  out  and  mingled  with  the 
strings.  His  music  awakened  deep  feelings.  What  he 
did  with  his  hands  was  done  with  ease  and  grace.  He 
handled  his  feet  and  legs  more  awkwardly.  I  recall 
the  peculiar  'Abe  Lincoln'  twist  he  gave  his  feet  when 
he  sat  down  and  crossed  them  over  the  back  of  a 
chair.  He  was  natural  and  sun-shiny,  then  at  intervals 
a  little  sombre  and  sad,  a  perfect  manifestation  of 
nature,  weaving  into  each  day  natural  and  simple 
pleasures,  his  face  wreathed  in  smiles  and  breaking  out 
into  the  most  intoxicating  laughter.  Then  again  he 
would  have  long  spells  of  silence.  His  gifts  were  mar 
velous — all  were  there,  not  yet  wide  awake.  Some 
times  he  would  read  verses  to  my  sister  and  laugh  and 
blush  as  he  confessed  to  their  authorship.  When  we 
read  books  together,  he  would  amplify  and  illuminate 
the  author's  meaning  in  a  most  exceptional  manner. 
To  conclude — he  was  a  sensitive  plant,  wholly  uncon 
ventional.  He  dared  not  give  too  much  thought  and 
study  to  the  writings  of  others  for  fear  that  his  own 
utterances  would  take  on  their  peculiar  hue.  He  was 
strictly  individual.  He  thought  best  when  left  alone, 
untrammelled  by  the  world,  or  others.  My  lament  is 
that,  owing  to  his  timidity  and  modesty,  his  fellowmen 


214  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

have  not  been  permitted  to  look  into  the  great  world  of 
prose  and  philosophy  concealed  in  his  heart." 

When  they  were  talking  on  weighty  subjects  in  the 
woods,  Mr.  Townsend  remembered  that  Riley  stood 
with  uncovered  head,  and  in  an  eager,  listening  atti 
tude.  He  had  large,  lustrous  eyes — the  eyes  of  "The 
Remarkable  Man" — that  had  that  dreamy  far-off  look, 
seeing  what  is  described,  though  it  is  buried  under 
the  pyramids  of  Egypt. 

"It  is  not  doubted  that  men  have  a  home  in  that  place 
where  each  one  has  established  his  heart  and  the  sum 
of  his  possessions ;  whence  he  will  not  depart  if  nothing 
calls  him  away;  whence  if  he  has  departed  he  seems 
to  be  a  wanderer,  and  if  he  returns  he  ceases  to  wan 
der."  Thus  Riley  had  repeated  the  words  while  spin 
ning  along  the  highway  with  the  Doctor,  priding  him 
self  on  the  one  thing  in  "Conditions  from  Civil  Law," 
he  could  remember.  He  had  smiled  over  "the  sum  of 
his  possessions,"  and  the  comedians  had  heartily  en 
joyed  the  joke.  After  working  a  month  in  the  labora 
tory  he  began  to  think  seriously  of  home.  "Greenfield," 
he  said,  "had  been  but  a  speck  on  the  map  of  Retrospec 
tion — so  novel  had  been  my  experience  on  the  road.  I 
had  not  made  haste  to  return.  Like  a  checker  player, 
I  had  one  fixed  purpose  in  mind  and  that  was  to  take 
plenty  of  time."  But  with  the  coming  of  winter  days 
and  calls  from  home,  came  also  the  desire  to  cease  wan 
dering.  One  of  the  calls  was  from  the  Sunday-school. 
The  similarity  in  the  illustrations  of  the  golden  text 
was  growing  monotonous.  "Our  blackboard,"  wrote  a 
friend,  "does  not  possess  the  beauty  it  did  when  it  re 
ceived  the  magic  touch  of  your  artistic  fingers."  The 
children  were  sighing  for  the  illustrated  "Whisper 
Songs"  and  "Lessons  for  Little  People."  In  the  spring 


WITH  THE  WIZARD  OIL  COMPANY       215 

before  leaving  Greenfield,  he  had  been  a  wizard  at  the 
blackboard.  "What  he  did  with  a  piece  of  yellow  chalk 
and  the  unicorn,"  said  a  Sunday-school  goer,  "was  to 
say  the  least  unorthodox.  Such  flying  colors !  He  made 
the  blackboard  look  like  a  millinery  establishment.  To 
the  children  it  was  as  good  as  a  magic-lantern  show." 
An  added  reason  for  his  leaving  was  that 
he  had  become  too  conspicuous  in  Lima  for  per 
sonal  comfort.  Of  late  the  "Hoosier,"  to  use  his  own 
words,  "had  been  scrutinized  by  strangers  as  critically 
as  a  splinter  in  the  thumb  of  a  near-sighted  man."  At 
Lima  Riley  had  his  "seedy  overcoat"  improved 
by  lining  it  with  astrakhan.  That  coat,  it  was 
said,  "made  the  farmers  green  with  envy;  it  set 
the  style  for  fur-lined  overcoats  in  Allen  County." 
The  public  eye  becoming  a  little  too  obtrusive, 
Riley  resolved  to  cross  over  into  "the  selvedge  of 
his  native  state,"  lift  his  voice  and  hat,  and  shout  de 
liverance  from  "the  land  of  perpetual  strangers."  In 
the  early  dusk  of  a  December  evening,  he  stepped  from 
the  train  at  Union  City,  and  after  a  few  days  with  "a 
remarkable  man"  boarded  the  "Bob  Tail  Accommoda 
tion"  for  Hancock  County. 

The  Greenfield  Democrat,  which  had  already  begun 
what  proved  to  be  a  half-century  record  of  the  poet's 
goings  and  comings,  was  awake  as  usual.  For  five 
years  it  had  struck  off  Riley  locals  with  the  fidelity  of 
a  clock.  December  23,  1875,  it  struck  again:  "James 
W.  Riley  arrived  in  the  city  on  Friday  last.  He  is  look 
ing  fine  and  enjoying  excellent  health." 


CHAPTER  X 

SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET 

A  POLITE  city,  according  to  Dean  Swift,  should 
have  its  Grub  Street,  a  blind  alley  fitted  up  at 
the  public  expense  as  an  apartment  for  the 
Muses.  A  private  street,  as  Doctor  Johnson  put  it, 
for  writers  of  small  histories,  temporary  poems, 
and  inferior  literary  productions.  Greenfield  had 
such  an  alley  in  the  seventies  of  the  last  century.  Ac 
cording  to  Riley,  its  assets  were  a  garret,  a  paintshop, 
two  or  three  gloomy  hotel  rooms,  a  lead  pencil  and  the 
"Respectfully  Declined"  papers  of  the  Debut  Club.  Lia 
bilities  unknown — not  obtainable.  He  recalled  that  the 
alley  was  a  refuge  for  a  writer  pursued  by  the  town 
marshal  for  debt.  "Often,"  said  he,  gleefully  exag 
gerating,  "I  ran  down  an  alley  with  an  officer  behind 
me.  Beware  of  debt,"  he  moaned,  mimicking  Horace 
Greeley;  "he  is  a  rich  man  who  owes  nothing  and  has 
a  chance  to  earn  his  daily  bread."  Those  insolvent  days 
throw  light  on  a  bill  bearing  the  date  of  October, 
1891,  from  the  proprietor  of  a  hotel  in  Kentucky, 
who  once  was  the  landlord  of  the  old  Dunbar  House. 
"Do  you  remember,"  wrote  the  proprietor,  "the  fellow 
who  had  the  old  Greenfield  Hotel  and  that  you  dropped 
in  sometimes  to  see  him  away  back  in  the  Hayes  cam 
paign?  I  find  on  my  books  a  charge  of  $3.40." 

In  1876  the  poet  unable  to  pay  for  a  week's  lodging; 
in  1891,  his  books  and  his  royalties  running  into  the 
thousands — the  author  eager  to  pay  all  bills,  large  or 

216 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          217 

small,  old  or  new,  visible  or  obscure.  Here  is  the  con 
trast  of  fifteen  years.  Truly  a  typical  instance  of 
hardships  in  the  literary  field,  another  lesson  in  small 
beginnings. 

His  Grub  Street  effusions  include  embryonic  things 
from  all  quarters  of  the  sky,  a  "mass  of  metrical 
baubles"  that  were  too  frail  and  futile  to  last.  Within 
a  few  years,  like  dry  forest  leaves,  they  went  "flying 
and  scurrying  God  knows  where."  Among  the  first 
was  "The  Poet's  Realm,"  to  which  Riley  subscribed 
himself  "Edyrn,"  his  first  nom  de  plume — ten  eight- 
line  stanzas,  describing  a  dreamland  somewhere  in 
space  where  the  soul  drifts  away  on  the  breeze  like  a 
fairy  wisp  of  thistledown  leaving  the  heart  an  empty 
husk  "on  the  coast  of  Care  and  Pain."  Sunbeams 
glanced  on  the  walls  of  a  palace  in  a  garden  of  vines  and 
flowers  and  fountains.  There  was  the  ebb  and  flow 
of  music,  fair  ladies  and  lords  and  the  rustle  of  scarfs 
and  plumes,  a  courtly  company  and  melody  going  mad 
at  a  banquet: 

"Clang  the  harp  in  its  wildest  key, 
And  shatter  the  bugle's  throat ; 
Fling  the  flags  from  the  balcony 
And  the  bridge  across  the  moat : 
In  his  goodly  realm  so  broad  and  wide, 
The  Poet  hath  no  fear- 
Ragged,  haggard  and  hungry-eyed 
He  is  lord  and  master  here." 

When  Riley  wrote  these  lines  he  was  purblind,  as  he 
himself  admits  in  a  subsequent  chapter.  "Not  there, 
not  there,  my  child,"  repeated  the  Muse;  "not  in 
distant  space  or  in  foreign  lands.  It  has  been  done 
that  way  before.  Your  realm  is  here  at  home,  right 
under  your  feet.  You  'are  to  live  on  the  coast  of  Care 


218  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

and  Pain  but  your  heart  is  not  to  be  an  empty  husk. 
You  are  not  to  sing  of  palaces  and  lords  and  ladies.  You 
are  to  sing  of  log  cabins,  of  children,  of  common  folk  in 
the  kitchen,  in  the  shop  and  at  the  plow." 

Riley  soon  tired  of  "Edyrn"  and  within  a  year  sub 
scribed  himself  "Jay  Whit."  Some  ten  years  elapsed 
before  that  April  day  in  1881,  when,  after  writing 
"The  Ripest  Peach  is  Highest  on  the  Tree,"  he  pulled 
the  joints  out  of  his  name,  and  first  signed  himself 
James  Whitcomb  Riley. 

After  "The  Poet's  Realm,"  Riley  wrote  "A  Retro 
spect,"  in  several  stanzas  of  which  he  wanders  back  to 
the  scenes  of  boyhood,  back  to  the  house  where  he  was 
born,  back  to  the  swing  under  the  locust  tree,  back  to 
the  schoolroom, 

"And  down  through  the  woods  to  the  swimming  hole, 
Where  the  big,  white,  hollow  old  sycamore  grows." 

After  "A  Retrospect"  came  "Philiper  Flash,"  ten  ten- 
line  stanzas,  which  Mrs.  Rhoda  Millikan,  who  of  all  the 
Greenfield  mothers  had  a  right  to  know,  said  half  was 
his  personal  experience.  Riley  said  a  third,  which 
makes  it  certain  that  a  fraction  at  least  was  biograph 
ical. 

"Young  Philiper  Flash  was  a  promising  lad, 
His  intentions  were  good — but  oh,  how  sad, 
For  a  person  to  think 
How  the  veriest  pink 
And  bloom  of  perfection  may  turn  out  bad." 

Young  Fiash  was  the  son  of  a  moral  father  who 
"shaved  notes  in  a  barberous  way,"  and  vauntingly 
prided  himself  on  making  the  boy  do  what  he  was  told ; 
the  pet  of  an  excellent  mother  "with  a  martyr  look," 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          219 

who  loved  him  so  tenderly  she  could  cry  when  he 
stumped  his  toe. 

"She  stroked  his  hair 
With  such  mother  care 
When  the  dear  little  angel  learned  to  swear." 

The  way  the  fast  young  man  jingled  the  dollars  and 
dimes  and  strewed  his  wealth  was  the  talk  of  the  land. 
Things  went  from  bad  to  worse. 

"Young  Philiper  Flash,  on  a  winterish  day, 
Was  published  a  bankrupt,  so  they  say; 

And  as  far  as  I  know 

I  suppose  it  was  so, 
For  matters  went  on  in  a  singular  way"-^ 

in  short,  went  to  smash,  and  young  Philiper  Flash  had 
to  begin  life  over  again. 

Fortunate,  indeed,  said  Higginson,  that  poets  unin 
tentionally  preserve  for  us  samples  of  their  early  crude- 
ness, — and  unfortunate  indeed,  added  his  friend,  that 
they  intentionally  preserve  samples  of  their  late  crude- 
ness  and  offer  it  to  the  public  as  poetry.  That  we  have 
samples  of  Riley's  authorship,  early  or  late,  is  not 
directly  due  to  any  sense  of  value  he  put  on  them  but  to 
a  clear,  well-defined  superstition  that  he  must  not  de 
stroy  anything  he  wrote.  He  was  the  instrument  of  the 
Muses  but  it  was  not  his  function  to  determine  values. 
To  make  a  book  was  an  affliction.  He  never  could  de 
cide  happily  or  conclusively  what  to  include  and  what 
to  reject.  To  him  his  poems  were  ventures  on  an  uncer 
tain  sea.  "How,"  he  once  remarked,  "were  the  sons  of 
poverty  and  rhyme  ever  to  know  what  to  offer?  The 
wren  feeds  on  what  the  eagle  overlooks."  Making  a 
poem,  he  would  say  with  Burns,  was  like  begetting  a 
son;  you  can  not  know  whether  you  have  a  wise  man 


220  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

or  a  fool  until  you  have  given  him  to  the  world  to  try 
him. 

The  exception  to  the  foregoing  is  the  emphatic  dis 
count  he  put  on  most  of  his  Grub  Street  productions 
covering  the  first  five  years  of  the  seventies.  That  they 
were  crude  went  without  saying,  and  in  the  front  row 
of  these  he  included  that  "perfect  wrangle  of  bad  gram 
mar,"  his  first  poem  to  find  its  way  into  print,  which 
appeared  in  the  Poet's  Column  of  the  Greenfield  Com 
mercial.  "Metrical  bauble"  though  it  was,  on  the  day 
of  its  publication  he  read  it  over  and  over  again  till 
the  lines  actually  sounded  musical  to  him.  "That  con 
tribution/'  said  he,  "looked  larger  to  me  than  the  big 
gest  sign  I  ever  painted.  Why,  I  was  sure — sure,  mind 
you — that  it  could  be  seen  across  the  waters."  Since 
he,  in  amateurish  glee,  read  it  with  such  fervor,  per 
haps  the  reader  would  like  to  see  it : — 

POET'S    COLUMN 

For  the  Commercial 
THE  SAME  OLD  STORY  TOLD  AGAIN 

The  same  old  story  told  again — 

The  maiden  droops  her  head. 

The  rip'ning  glow  of  her  crimson  cheek 

Is  answering  in  her  stead. 

The  pleading  tone  of  a  trembling  voice 

Is  telling  her  the  way 

He  loved  her  when  his  heart  was  young 

In  Youth's  sunshiny  day. 

The  trembling  tongue,  the  longing  tone, 

Imploringly  asking  why 

They  cannot  be  as  happy  now 

As  in  the  days  gone  by  ? 

And  two  fond  hearts,  tumultuous 

With  overflowing  joy, 

Are  dancing  to  the  music 

Which  that  dear,  provoking  boy 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          221 

Is  twanging  on  his  bowstring, 
As,  fluttering  his  wings, 
He  sends  his  loved-charged  arrows 
While  merrily  he  sings : 
"Ho !  ho !  my  dainty  maiden, 
.  It  surely  cannot  be 
You  are  thinking  you  are  mistress 
Of  your  heart  when  it  is  me." 
And  another  gleaming  arrow, 
Does  the  little  god's  behest 
And  the  dainty  little  maiden 
Falls  upon  her  lover's  breast. 
The  same  old  story  told  again, 
And  listened  o'er  and  o'er, 
Will  still  be  new,  and  pleasing,  too, 
Till  time  shall  be  no  more. 

EDYRN. 
Sept.  7,  1870. 

Longfellow,  shuddering  before  the  windows  of  the 
Post-Gazette  building  while  its  walls  rumbled  with  the 
jar  of  ink-balls  and  presses,  waiting  for  his  "Battle  of 
LovelPs  Pond,"  was  not  a  whit  more  agitated  than  was 
Riley  before  the  door  of  the  Commercial  office.  Al 
though  the  latter  had  seen  twenty-one  summers,  he  was 
as  young  at  heart  as  the  boy  of  thirteen  in  Portland. 
The  desire  to  write  the  lines  had  been  stealing  over  his 
youthful  innocence  for  some  time.  After  they  were 
written  came  the  mental  strain.  "The  first  day,"  said 
a  Grub  Street  chum,  "he  was  absent  from  dinner;  the 
second,  when  nobody  was  looking  he  took  the  lines  to 
the  editor."  The  state  of  Riley's  mind  as  he  stood  by 
the  Commercial  office  door  with  the  manuscript,  is  best 
related  in  his  own  words : — > 

"A  weird  atmosphere  hung  over  the  office.  Strange 
footsteps  through  the  hall  and  sounds  of  muffled  voices 
fell  on  my  half -conscious  hearing.  No  weighty  prob- 


222  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

lems  of  finance  rolled  heavily  along  the  empty  corri 
dors  of  thought.  Down  the  vista  of  my  dream  the 
Democratic  platform  vanished  like  a  ghost  at  daybreak. 
Something  vague,  shadowy  and  indefinable  seemed  to 
hang  over  me.  As  I  tip-toed  to  the  door  and  listened, 
I  heard  distinctly  the  words,  "The  Editor.'  What  could 
they  mean? 

"  'Walk  in  and  tackle  him,'  whispered  an  invisible 
monitor.  I  slowly  turned  the  knob.  'Listen/  said  I, 
'did  you  not  hear  something  shriek?' 

"  'Suppose  you  did/  returned  my  monitor. — 'Why  do 
you  tremble?' 

"  'Perhaps  he's  coming  out.' 

"  'Let  him  come ;  you  can  give  it  to  him  here.' 

"A  chill  rippled  over  me ;  I  could  give  it  to  him  any 
where,  I  thought,  but  he  was  liable  to  frown  and  kick. 
I  was  at  the  point,  absent-mindedly,  of  knocking  at  the 
door  when  my  monitor  said,  'Go  in  without  knocking ; 
he's  not  coming  out :  go  right  in ;  beard  the  lion  in  his 
den' — and  I  went  in,  told  the  editor  how  I  had  hesi 
tated  and  then  sank  to  the  floor.  Five  minutes  later 
I  recovered  and  on  leaving  the  office,  cast  one  look  back 
ward.  He  was  punching  and  crumpling  my  manuscript 
with  a  blue  pencil  as  if  it  were  a  lizard  or  a  spider." 

Just  how  much  of  the  foregoing  is  the  play  of  Riley's 
fancy  the  reader  may  determine.  Learning  his  "poem" 
was  to  be  printed,  he  got  a  proof  as  soon  as  it  was  set  up 
but  kept  all  a  secret  till  the  day  of  the  paper's  issue. 
The  work  of  his  pen  in  type  for  the  first  time — earth 
had  no  joy  like  that — never  had  had  anything  like  it! 
Who  "Edyrn"  was,  was  not  known  for  several  days. 
When  the  secret  leaked  out,  "his  friends,"  said  one  of 
them,  "rallied  round  him  and  filled  his  head  with  the 
usual  supply  of  flattery  and  nonsense.  His  father's 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          223 

comment  was  not  encouraging.  'Edyrn'  did  not  borrow 
a  dollar,-  buy  extra  copies  and  mail  to  distant  friends. 
Borrowing  was  not  his  forte  in  those  days." 

Riley's  first  experience  with  "poetry"  antedated  his 
"first  poem  in  print"  fifteen  years.  "It  was  while  I  was 
a  small  boy,"  said  he,  "that  I  wrote  my  first  rhymes. 
They  were  the  outcome  of  what  seemed  dire  necessity 
to  my  childish  mind.  The  children  in  Greenfield  were 
in  the  habit  of  sending  valentines  back  and  forth.  They 
were  of  the  old-fashioned  sort ;  the  pictures  were  cari 
catures,  the  verses  doggerel.  They  cost  but  a  cent 
a  piece  but  I  was  so  small  that  pennies  were  not  given 
me  for  valentines.  I  wanted  to  send  them,  all  the  same ; 
so  with  some  cheap  crayon  I  sketched  pictures  on  scrap 
paper  as  nearly  like  the  boughten  pictures  as  I  could, 
only  I  tried  to  make  the  faces  look  like  those  I  meant  to 
send  them  to.  After  I  had  colored  my  crude  figures  I 
remembered  that  my  valentines  had  no  mottoes.  So  I 
made  up  rhymes  as  I  went  along.  It  was  childish  stuff, 
but  it  met  the  approval  of  my  mother  from  whom  I 
inherited  my  inclination  for  drawing.  She  was  so 
pleased  she  let  me  have  my  own  way  for  a  week." 
.  Above  his  second  pen  name,  "Jay  Whit,"  such  "drib- 
blings"  as  "Mockery,"  "Flames  and  Ashes,"  "A  Bal 
lad,"  and  "Johnny,"  appeared  in  the  Indianapolis 
Mirror  in  1872.  "The  Poet's  Wooing,"  and  "Man's  De 
votion,"  (the  former  was  rejected)  were  illustrated  by 
himself,  thus  again  exercising  the  gift  inherited  from 
his  mother.  Writing  of  the  latter  two  in  February  to 
his  brother  John  who  was  then  living  in  Indianapolis 
he  said: 

"Of  late  I  am  startlingly  prolific  in  composing.  I 
could  dispose  of  my  productions  like  brick — so  much 
per  thousand. 


224  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

And  say,  Dear  brother,  you  will  sign  'Jay  Whit/ 
Providing  the  paper  will  publish  it. 

And  if  they  should  refuse,  let  me  down  gently.  I  have 
written  with  a  pencil  to  make  it  as  plain  as  possible  to 
you — don't  let  them  see  my  manuscript — unless  you 
should  endeavor  to  publish  it  in  an  illustrated  paper — • 
you  may  then  submit  my  illustration  to  them.  Yours 
obscurely." 

Of  "A  Ballad/'  a  sea  story,  he  wrote  his  brother  in 
May  as  follows : 

"If  you  can't  get  this  on  the  front  page,  don't  put 
it  in,  for  I  consider  it  the  best  thing  I  have  ever  writ 
ten  and  I  want  to  see  it  occupy  a  front  seat — or  we'll 
let  it  stand  till  one  can  be  procured.  I 

"Try  it  for  this  week — And  feel  them  a  little  on  a 
prose  sketch — for  instance  (do  it  this  way) :  'He  has 
written  some  sketches  that  I  consider  good — not  tire 
some  and  so  forth — but  racy — original — with  now  and 
then  a  little  spice  of  poetry — humor — wit — and  quite 
pathetic  occasionally — and  so  forth' — -understand?  Try 
it  and  send  me  the  result. 

"Use  your  best  endeavors  to  send  it  to  the  editor  this 
week.  If  published,  I  expect  there  will  be  some  one 
from  Greenfield  (referring  to  his  brother)  who  would 
like  to  hand  his  name  down  to  posterity  by  having  it 
said  that  he  once  brought  me  from  the  renovator's,  a 
second-hand  coat — when  I  was  too  poor  to  even  thank 
him  for  his  trouble.  (Exit  laughing.)" 

"Johnny,"  a  story  of  three  thousand  words,  was 
the  first  sketch  to  appear  in  print.  The  plot  is  so 
simple  a  child  could  remember  it.  The  scene 
is  a  country  town  with  its  surplus  of  village 
gossip,  barking  dogs,  and  dinner  bells.  There 
is  the  meeting  of  a  bachelor  and  a  widow  in 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          225 

her  mourning  weeds  on  an  April  evening,  a  fire  at 
midnight  and  the  rescue  of  the  widow's  boy  from  a 
burning  roof  by  the  bachelor — and  then  in  swift  suc 
cession  the  courtship  and  the  marriage.  The  story  was 
"racy  and  original"  as  its  author  wrote  when  seeking  to 
have  it  printed  in  the  county  paper,  but  "dull  and  tire 
some"  when  he  grew  older  and  consigned  it  to  the 
waste  basket. 

In  1873,  as  we  have  seen,  the  Argonaut  was  away 
from  Greenfield  with  the  "Graphics."  In  the  spring 
and  summer  of  1874,  he  sent  "Private  Theatricals,"  "At 
Last,"  "The  Poet's  Wooing,"  "My  Jolly  Friend's  Se 
cret,"  "Plain  Sermons,"  "A  Summer's  Afternoon,"  and 
"That  Little  Dorg"  to  the  Danbury  News.  All  were 
accepted  as  the  effusions  of  a  "rising  litterateur."  They 
lacked  the  spontaneous  felicity  of  after  years  but  were 
evidence  of  merit  nevertheless.  News  of  their  ac 
ceptance  came  to  him  "like  a  shower  to  a  fainting 
strawberry."  Montgomery  Bailey  and  his  "Danbury 
News  Man"  were  popular  in  Greenfield  as  elsewhere. 
The  incessant  flow  of  humor  from  his  pen  had  quick 
ened  Riley's  sense  of  drollery  for  some  time,  and  the 
editor  in  turn  caught  gleams  of  funny  things  in  "Jay 
Whit."  Of  course  the  contributions  were  free.  It  was 
honor  enough  to  have  them  accepted.  Here  was  some 
thing  new.  Riley  had  crossed  the  Hudson.  He  had 
penetrated  the  Icy  East: 

"What  were  his  feelings  as  grave  and  alone, 
He  sat  in  the  silence,  glaring  in  the  grate 
That  stewed  and  sighed  on  in  an  undertone 
As  subtle — immovable  as  fate?" 

What  were  his  feelings?  Too  numerous  and  unknow 
able  for  consideration  here.  But  one  thing  was  settled 
— settled  at  that  very  early  date.  Hungry  as  he  was 


226  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

for  eastern  recognition,  he  would  not  be  absorbed  by  it. 
"Whenever  a  writer  west  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains," 
said  he,  "has  risen  to  eminence,  the  East  has  absorbed 
him  with  greedy  haste.  By  this  process  his  genius 
loses  the  tang  of  its  native  region,  the  flavor  of  the  soil 
from  which  he  sprung,  and  the  soil  loses  the  talent  it 
nurtured  and  on  which  it  had  a  claim." 

In  February,  1874,  "Farmer  Whipple— Bachelor" 
was  printed  in  the  Greenfield  News,  and  in  December, 
"Tradin'  Joe"  appeared.  Both  poems  were  written 
without  thought  of  publication.  Their  author  tucked 
them  away  in  his  "reticule"  for  recitation  in  school- 
houses  and  on  his  country  excursions.  "Farmer  Whip- 
pie"  was  one  of  the  popular  numbers  recited  from  the 
steps  of  the  Wizard  Oil  wagon, 

"In  those  days,"  said  Riley,  "I  had  a  'dramatic* 
friend  who  was  on  the  rocks  as  often  as  I  was.  When  I 
was  begging  for  bread  the  idea  invariably  struck  him 
that  I  could  in  some  way,  unknown  to  fortune,  make 
ends  meet,  and  promote  his  schemes  however  gigantic 
or  unattainable  they  were."  A  letter  from  the  friend 
came  from  Pendleton  in  February,  1874.  "I  have  a 
desire,"  he  wrote,  "to  go  into  partnership  with  you. 
An  idea  has  just  struck  me.  Perhaps  we  could  buy  out 
the  editor  who  publishes  the  paper  here.  I  think  we 
could  make  money  out  of  it.  You  are  a  good  writer, 
and  would  then  have  something  to  do.  We  could  save 
our  money  and  then  go  into  a  dramatic  company  to 
gether.  I  mean  engage  one  of  our  own.  If  you  are 
willing  to  be  steady  and  work  and  save  and  try,  come 
over  and  see  me  and  find  out  if  the  editor  will  sell  and 
at  what  price.  The  reason  I  write  the  above  is  that  I 
learn  that  you  now  have  nothing  to  do"  (and  so  forth) . 
The  letter  set  "Jay  Whit"  considering  seriously  the 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          227 

newspaper  field,  as  did  also  a  postal  card  from  his 
Graphic  Chum  referring  to  a  prospect  of  employment 
on  the  Kokomo  Republican,  which  (in  the  chum's 
opinion)  the  Hoosier  Humorist  could  make  a  better 
paper  than  the  Danbury  News.  Late  in  the  year  he 
applied  for  work  at  the  office  of  the  Greenfield  News. 
The  editor  was  not  able  to  pay  for  work.  "Sorely  as  I 
need  it,"  said  the  applicant,  "it  is  not  money  I  want  but 
experience."  Next  week  the  News  appeared  with : 

W.  T.  Walker,  Editor 

J.  W.  Riley,  Associate  Editor. 

"We  now  have  in  our  office,"  (so  wrote  the  Associate 
Editor,  though  the  News'  readers  imputed  the  pleas 
antry  to  the  Editor) — "a  red-headed  devil  who  loses  his 
hair  occasionally  by  spontaneous  combustion.  He 
wears  a  tiny  hat  and  never  considers  himself  in  full 
dress  without  a  Babcock  fire  extinguisher  on  his  back. 
In  times  past  he  has  contributed  to  the  News  under 
the  nom  de  plume  of  'Jay  Whit/  Now  as  local  editor 
he  will  doubtless  infuse  into  its  columns  the  spell  of  his 
sobriquet  without  the  h.  To  say  that  this  new  member 
of  our  staff  will  make  the  local  columns  hum  would  be 
placing  it  mild.  Many  of  his  friends  think  he  has 
struck  his  proper  gait  and  will  develop  into  a  great 
editor." 

It  was  the  Associate  Editor's  province  to  collect 
items  from  townspeople  and  countrymen  and  "em 
bellish  them  for  publication."  Then  it  was  that  the 
"apprentice-poet  of  the  town,  rising  to  impassioned 
heights"  began 

"To  lighten  all  the  empty,  aching  miles 
Around  with  brighter  fancies,  hopes  and  smiles." 


228  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

He  threw  in  with  the  Hominy  Ridge  items  local  adver 
tising  rhymes  such  as: 

"Carpets  coarse  and  carpets  fine, 
Rich  in  color  and  design, 
Sold  at  bargains  half  divine" — 
(with  name  of  business  firm  attached.) 

"Has  anybody  heard  of  a  cure  for  window  panes  ?"  he 
asked.  An  old  lady  sent  full  instructions  for  a  liver 
pad.  He  did  not  know  about  that,  "but  a  half  section 
of  number  one  strawberry  shortcake  makes  a  stomach 
pad  that  has  few  equals  and  no  superior." 

To  his  little  comrade  in  the  street :  "Now  the  small 
boy  busies  himself  collecting  pennies  for  the  circus/' 
ran  a  local,  "but  he  will  probably  crawl  under  the  can 
vas  as  heretofore.  May  he  have  his  usual  good  luck." 

Nor  did  the  local  editor  neglect  his  rural  neighbors : 

"The  farmer  works  his  hired  hand 
From  four  o'clock  in  the  morning  light 
Till  eight  or  nine  o'clock  at  night, 
And  then  finds  fault  with  his  appetite." 

After  this  he  would  go  after  them  for  delinquent  sub 
scriptions:  "The  last  twenty-five  sticks  of  an  editor's 
woodpile  vanish  before  his  eyes  like  the  morning  dew." 
When  items  were  scarce,  in  corn-planting  time,  for  in 
stance,  he  "would  go  out  and  look  over  the  Poor  Farm 
and  come  back  with  a  basketful  of  abuse,  neglect  and 
so  on." 

It  goes  without  saying  that  the  Associate  Editor  sup 
plied  the  News  liberally  with  effusions  of  a  literary 
character.  There  were  such  fledglings  in  verse  as 
"Leloine"  (a  faint  imitation  of  Poe),  "An  Autumn 
Leaf,"  and  "The  Ancient  Printerman."  The  paper 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          229 

almost  staggered  under  the  weight  of  "Babe  Mc 
Dowell,"  the  story  of  a  college  student  falling  in  love 
with  a  beautiful  girl  who  was  training  for  the  stage. 
"My  first  story  to  require  serial  publication,"  remarked 
Riley.  "Length  was  its  sole  merit." 

In  the  spring  of  1875  he  made  another  bid  for  east 
ern  recognition.  Purchasing  a  sample  copy  of  Hearth 
and  Home  at  a  news-stand,  he  concluded  to  try  his  luck 
with  the  doughty  "Ik  Marvel,"  who  had  charmed  him 
with  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor.  He  sent  him  "A 
Destiny,"  which  twenty  years  later  was  given  the  title 
"The  Dreamer"  in  A  Child-World — "the  poem  about  a 
long-haired  young  man,"  as  Riley  expressed  it,  "who 
associated  much  with  himself,  took  to  solitude,  and 
walked  alone  in  the  woods."  It  was  published  April 
tenth  with  three  quaint  illustrations;  the  first,  the 
strange  young  man  without  companions,  his  hat  and 
book  on  the  ground  in  the  shade  of  a  majestic  tree, 
the  dreamer 

"Lying  limp,  with  upturned  gaze, 
Idly  dreaming  away  his  days": 

the  second  and  third,  the  farmer  at  the  pasture  bars, 
who  saw  the  fragment  of  legal  cap  paper  with  the  sum 
mer  rhyme  thereon,  which  he  chased  to  the  thicket  of 
trees,  and  there  discovered  that  its  author  was  not  a 
poet  but  the  inventor  of  a  churn. 

When  Riley  received  the  issue  of  Hearth  and  Home 
containing  his  poem  and  a  letter  commending  his  verse, 
together  with  a  draft  for  eight  dollars,  he  "proceeded" 
(to  quote  his  own  words)  "to  build  a  full-sized  air  cas 
tle.  At  last  he  had  struck  the  trail  to  fortune.  He  walked 
in  the  clouds" — and  likewise  walked  down  to  the  Green- 


230  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

field  Banking  Company  to  cash  the  draft — the  first  he 
had  ever  received  for  a  poem.  He  was  rich — rich  as 
the  parson  with  forty  pounds  a  year.  Louisa  May  Al- 
cott  did  not  have  fairer  visions  of  fortune  when  she  sold 
her  first  story  to  the  newspaper  for  five  dollars.  Sev 
eral  days  it  was  humorously  whispered  round  town  that 
"Jay  Whit,"  after  waiting-  so  long  and  so  patiently, 
would  now  be  able  "to  liquidate  his  debts."  Alas,  for 
the  wide  gulf  between  them  and  the  size  of  the  draft. 
"He  paid  no  debts,"  said  a  Greenfield  chum ;  "it  was  a 
red  letter  day;  we  stood  on  our  heads  for  joy  and  lived 
like  nabobs  while  the  money  lasted."  But  the  game  was 
yet  by  no  means  in  his  own  hands.  Just  when  the  Asso 
ciate  Editor  was  making  a  name  for  himself  and  colors 
were  flying,  the  News  was  sold,  its  name  changed  to 
Republican  and  his  dreams  shattered.  The  paper  went 
from  bad  to  worse  and  soon  joined  the  great  majority. 
"I  strangled  the  little  thing,"  said  Riley.  "Then 
I  continued  to  grind  out  poetry  for  'literary  depart 
ments.'  I  more  than  supplied  the  foreign  demand 
with  plenty  left  over  for  home  use.  When  I  sent  an 
editor  a  prose  sketch  he  advised  me  to  try  poetry.  I 
did  so  and  scribbled  away  at  the  rate  of  2 :40  a  ream. 
Then  he  advised  me  to  try  prose  again.  This  was  too 
much.  Pursuing  the  tenor  of  my  own  way,  I  had  my 
hair  cut,  painted  a  sign  or  two  and  played  the  guitar." 
Throughout  his  Grub  Street  experience  he  had  always 
a  meager  income  from  his  trade.  When  other  ventures 
failed  he  could  paint  a  sign.  To  this  end  he  vibrated 
between  Greenfield  and  Anderson. 

While  he  was  thus  lingering  along  in  doubt,  he  was 
handed  the  following  circular  from  the  Western  Union 
Telegraph  Company,  then  located  in  the  old  Blackford 
Block,  corner  Washington  and  Meridian,  Indianapolis : 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          231 

Dear  Sir: 

Will  you  please  keep  me  advised  promptly  by 
telegraph,  of  all  important  news  transpiring  in  your 
vicinity,  such  as  homicides,  suicides,  accidents,  and 
matters  of  moment  that  may  be  exciting  the  public 
attention.  I  will  pay  at  the  rate  of  fifty  cents  a  special, 
settlement  to  be  made  at  the  end  of  each  month.  Make 
the  special  short  as  possible.  By  doing  this  you  will 
greatly  oblige 

Yours  truly, 

R.  T.  HOWARD, 
Manager  of  Specials. 

"I  proceeded,"  said  Riley,  "to  build  another  air  castle. 
I  recalled  a  valuable  list  of  fires,  suicides  and  accidents 
in  the  past.  Remittance  for  press  telegrams  would  buy 
shoes  and  bread.  But,  strange  to  relate,  not  a  lax, 
shabby,  villainous  thing  happened  the  whole  summer. 
Monotony  was  a  drug  on  the  market.  They  had  lynched 
the  negro  the  week  before  the  circular  came.  There 
were  weeks  of  waiting.  I  grew  ill.  The  while  I  tried 
to  study  law — and  if  wading  through  that  deplorable 
stuff  (he  was  quoting  from  Bleak  House),  if  charging 
down  the  middle  and  up  again,  if  going  through  that 
country  dance  of  costs  and  fees  and  corruption  will  not 
make  a  man  sick,  nothing  else  will.  The  humdrum 
days  continuing,  I  proceeded  to  make  a  little  excite 
ment  of  my  own.  A  traveling  showman  passing  by, 
I  climbed  on  the  wagon  and  shed  the  town." 

Returning  from  that  "rather  lengthy  sojourn  in 
the  Buckeye  State"  (with  the  Wizard  Oil  Company), 
he  immediately  ascended  the  stairs  to  the  old  room  in 
the  Dunbar  House,  which  not  only  sheltered  the  Grub 
Street  tenant,  but  had  the  honor  of  being  the  first 
"literary  den"  in  the  town.  Up  there  in  room  13  (his 
superstition  about  the  number  was  not  yet  a  trouble- 


232  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

some  factor) ,  up  there  he  spun  political  jingles  for  the 
Hayes  and  Wheeler  campaign ;  up  there  he  had  written 
'The  Dreamer,"  and  one  cold  January  night  while  his 
room-mate  sighed  over  the  waste  of  coal  oil  he  rose 
from  his  bed  and  saved  some  fragments  which  he  tied 
together  the  next  day  for  "My  Fiddle."  Up  there  he 
was  wont  to  "switch  the  bow  and  lean  back  and  laugh 
and  wink  at  every  rainy  day" ;  up  there 

"They  tell  me,  when  he  used  to  plink 
And  plonk  and  plunk  and  play, 
His  music  seemed  to  have  the  kink 
Of  driving  cares  away." 

While  occupying  "old  13"  he  sent  a  "bulky  envelope," 
a  second  sample  of  his  "fancy  work,"  to  Hearth  and 
Home.  The  venture  was  disastrous.  "By  the  time 
my  effusions  reached  them,"  said  Riley,  "the  hand  of 
Fate  had  closed  the  institution  like  a  telescope."  The 
verse  came  back  but  the  sting  was  taken  away  some 
what  by  the  letter  from  Donald  G.  Mitchell: 

THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY 

The  Daily  Graphic  Hearth  and  Home 

$12  Per  Year  $2.50  Per  Year 

New  York,  February  18,  1876. 
Mr.  J.  W.  Riley, 
Dear  Sir: 

The  sudden  decision  of  the  Graphic  Managers  to 
discontinue  the  publication  of  Hearth  and  Home  forth 
with,  compels  the  return  of  the  accompanying  very 
graceful  poem,  which  I  should  otherwise  publish  with 
pleasure. 

Trusting  that  you  may  not  be  discouraged  from 
further  exercise   of  your  literary  talent  through  a 
more  fortunate  medium,  I  remain, 
Yours  respectfully, 

the  Ex  Editor  of  "H.  &  H." 


SCRIBBLING  IN  GRUB  STREET          233 

The  "very  graceful  poem"  was  "A  Country  Path 
way,"  which  he  had  written  on  the  banks  of  Lick 
Creek  in  Madison  County,  where  he  was  visiting 
friends  for  a  week  at  an  old-fashioned  homestead. 
One  day,  after  whiling  a  few  hours  with  wheat 
thrashers  three  miles  from  the  homestead,  he  returned 
across  the  fields.  At  one  point  he  followed  a  path 
overhung  with  willow  boughs.  "It  was  a  dar 
ling  pathway,"  he  said,  recalling  the  afternoon 
walk;  "I  yearned  for  something  to  dispel  the  mist 
from  my  future.  What  would  I  not  give  to  know 
that  my  path  of  life  would  lead  on  through  scenes 
of  enchantments  and  up  to  the  door  of  a  smiling 
world  as  my  country  pathway  led  me  through  the 
valley,  and  across  the  orchard  to  the  door  of  smil 
ing  friends." 

To  the  "disastrous  venture"  in  Hearth  and  Home, 
lovers  of  Riley  verse  are  largely  indebted  for  "The 
Shower."  There  was  in  connection  therewith  a 
touch  of  rustic  beauty  and  purity  in  a  "British  Book" 
which  he  recalled  with  lively  pleasure.  "A  rainbow 
in  the  sky,  the  glittering  of  the  rain  upon  the  leaves ; 
the  dripping  poultry  under  the  hedge;  the  reflection 
of  the  cattle  on  the  road,  and  the  girl  with  her  gown 
over  her  shoulders," — a  picture  which  placed  James 
Burnet  in  the  first  rank  as  a  pastoral  painter;  and  it 
is  equally  true  that  "The  Shower"  and  after  it  "The 
Sudden  Shower"  placed  Riley  in  the  front  rank  of 
lyric  poets. 

On  receiving  the  Hearth  and  Home  letter,  Riley 
was  more  interested  in  "Ik  Marvel"  than  ever.  One 
day  he  ran  across  "A  Picture  of  Rain."  "Will  any 
one,"  asked  Mitchell,  "give  us  on  canvas,  a  good, 
rattling,  saucy  shower?  There  is  room  in  it  for  a 


234  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

rare  handling  of  the  brush : — the  vague,  indistinguish 
able  line  of  the  hills, — the  gray  lines,  slanted  by 
the  wind  and  trending  eagerly  downward, — the  swift 
petulant  dash  into  the  little  pools,  making  fairy  bub 
bles  that  break  as  soon  as  they  form, — the  land  smok 
ing  with  excess  of  moisture, — and  the  pelted  leaves 
all  wincing  and  shining  and  adrip." 

"Why  don't  you  try  it?"  asked  his  Graphic  Chum. 

"You  might  as  well  ask  the  clouds  to  rain,"  an 
swered  Riley.  However  the  query  did  set  him  think 
ing  and  in  due  time 

"The  cloud  above  put  on  its  blackest  frown, 
And  then,  as  with  a  vengeful  cry  of  pain, 
The  lightning  snatched  it,  ripped  and  flung  it  down 
In  ravelled  shreds  of  rain: 

"While  he,  transfigured  by  some  wondrous  art, 

Bowed  with  the  thirsty  lilies  to  the  sod, 
His  empty  soul  brimmed  over,  and  his  heart 
Drenched  with  the  love  of  God." 


CHAPTER  XI 
THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN; 

DO  YOU  know  Whitcomb  Riley?" 
"Whit  Riley? — oh,  yes,  I  know  him  and  his 
folks  well.  People  round  these  parts  don't 
think  much  of  him.  He  is  sort  o'  flighty  and  no  good." 
Such  was  the  answer  a  newspaper  correspondent  re 
ceived  from  an  old  lady,  a  resident  of  Greenfield,  who 
like  some  of  her  neighbors  had  less  faith  in  Riley's 
future  than  those  who  looked  on  from  a  distance.  She 
had  seen  many  human  riddles  in  the  Carolinas  where 
she  once  lived,  but  none,  she  was  quite  certain,  so  mys 
terious  as  "that  young  Riley,"  none  who  played  at  cross 
purposes  so  abstrusely.  "Just  when  he  seems  to  be 
getting  a  start  at  sign-painting  or  the  law/'  said 
another  neighbor,  "he  flies  the  track  and  over  the  hills 
he  goes."  While  collecting  items  for  the  Greenfield 
News,  he  would  be  unaccountably  seized  with  a  desire 
to  write  verse,  and  so  he  would  hie  away  "to  Fortville 
or  down  to  Fountaintown,  where,"  he  said,  "I 
rented  a  dingy  upstairs  room  for  ten  cents  a  week, 
and  locked  the  door."  Thus  he  avoided  the  look  of  idle 
curiosity  that  often  confronted  him  around  the  Green 
field  post-office.  Too  often  for  his  comfort  "the  won 
dering  eyes  of  the  curious  rabble"  were  fastened  on 
box  15,  his  letter  box,  with  its  pamphlets,  papers,  and 
magazines,  and  the  numerous  letters  with  mysterious 
postmarks,  ever  crowding  into  it.  To  old-timers  his 
withdrawal  from  society  was  past  comprehension. 

235 


236  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Usually,  they  observed,  folks  were  happy  when  they 
were  the  center  of  attraction.  Not  so  with  Riley. 
During  those  intervals  of  absence  from  home  (to 
borrow  the  "corduroy"  lines) : 

"He  lingered  and  delayed, 
And  kept  his  friends  away ; 
Shut  himself  within  his  room  and  stayed 
A- writing  there  from  day  to  day ; 
He  kept  a-getting  stranger  still, 
And  thinner  all  the  time, 
You  know,  as  any  fellow  will, 
On  nothing  else  but  rhyme." 

"And  when  after  a  two  weeks'  vigil  he  returned," 
said  one  of  his  comrades,  "he  was  still  the  pale,  sad- 
eyed  subject  of  bewilderment,  the  problem  Fate  alone 
could  decipher.  He  had  dreams  that  he  himself  but 
half  understood  and  of  course  none  of  his  friends 
understood."  He  was  the  man  he  describes  in  "Fame," 
who  drew 

"A  gloom  about  him  like  a  cloak, 
And  wandered  aimlessly.    The  few 
Who  spoke  of  him  at  all,  but  spoke 
Disparagingly  of  a  mind 
The  Fates  had  faultily  designed: 
Too  indolent  for  modern  times — 
Too  fanciful  and  full  of  whims — 
For,  talking  to  himself  in  rhymes, 
And  scrawling  never-heard-of  hymns, 
The  idle  life  to  which  he  clung 
Was  worthless  as  the  songs  he  sung!" 

The  "strange  young  man"  was  not  always  melan 
choly.  There  were  days,  sometimes  weeks,  when  he 
was  a  perfect  battery  of  merriment.  He  was  a  droll, 
ridiculous  genius,  the  gifted,  good-for-nothing  Bob 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN      237 

he  portrays  in  the  "Gilded  Roll" — laughing  always  at 
everything. 

"How  sad  he  seemed  in  his  wild  delight, 
And  how  tickled  indeed  when  he  wept  outright ; 
What  a  comical  man  when  he  writhed  in  pain, 
And  how  grieved  he  was  to  be  glad  again." 

On  rare  occasions  when  he  and  his  companions  were 
hilarious  in  the  old-time  charades,  he 

"Went  round  in  a  coat  of  pale  pink-blue, 
And  a  snow-white  vest  of  crimson  hue, 
And  trousers  purple,  and  gaiters  gray — 
All  cut,  as  the  French  or  Dutch  would  say, 
La — macht  nichts  aus,  oder — decollete." 

Friends  declared  that  he  was  in  almost  all  respects 
the  Mr.  Clickwad  of  the  "Respectfully  Declined  Papers 
of  the  Buzz  Club,"  a  fictitious  series  of  opinions,  ghastly 
dreams,  impromptu  rhymes  and  literary  frivolities, 
that  he  wrote  a  few  years  later  for  the  Indianap 
olis  Saturday  Herald.  Often  Mr.  Clickwad  seemed 
totally  oblivious  of  his  surroundings.  He  would  stare 
blankly  at  the  ragged  gas-jet,  drumming  his  pencil 
against  his  teeth.  Then  he  would  transfer  his  attention 
to  a  mangy  manuscript,  erase  a  word  here  and  there, 
and  drop  into  "a  comatose  condition  of  mentality"  that, 
to  lively  companions,  was  aggravating  in  the  extreme. 
Mr.  Clickwad  was  calmly  accepted  as  a  bundle  of  con 
tradictions.  His  faculty  for  pleasing  and  horrifying  in 
the  same  breath  was  simply  marvelous,  the  informali 
ties  of  his  fancy  "being  beyond  cavil  the  most  diabolic 
and  delightful  on  record." 

"Notwithstanding  his  eccentricities,"  remarked  a 
shrewd  Greenfield  attorney,  "Riley  does  know  the  Great 
Nine.  How  he  came  to  know  them  baffles  inquiry,  but 
he  certainly  does  enjoy  the  honor  of  their  friendship." 


238  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

With  what  excess  of  feeling  is  shown  in  a  brief 
message  to  Lee  0.  Harris.  He  had  "a  few  moments," 
he  said,  "to  lavish  in  a  dissipation  of  thought."  Signing 
himself  "Troubled  Tom,"  he  sends  his  Schoolmaster 
a  postal  card  to  say,  "I  have  been  thinking  of  you  all 
day  and  wondering  whether  the  Muse  is  on  good  terms 
with  you  this  misty  weather.  I  have  had  a  perfect 
night-mare  of  fine  frenzy."  Another  time  he  tried  to 
express  his  frenzy  in  verse : 

"0  he  was  a  poet  weird  and  sad, 
And  life  and  love  betimes  went  mad ; 
He  sang  such  songs  as  flame  and  flare 
Over  the  wide  world  everywhere. 
Famous  was  he  for  his  wan  wild  eyes, 
And  his  woeful  mien  and  his  heaving  sighs." 

Though  wild  and  eccentric,  though  his  lips  were  pale 
beneath  the  lamplight, 

"He  sang  and  the  lark  was  hushed  and  mute, 
And  the  dry-goods  clerk  forgot  his  flute ; 
And  the  night  operator  at  the  telegraph  stand 
Smothered  his  harp  in  his  trembling  hand ; 
The  dull  and  languid  as  they  read  his  song, 
Sighed  all  day  and  the  whole  night  long 
For  a  love  like  his  and  the  passion  warm 
As  the  pulsing  heart  of  the  thunder-storm." 

At  another  time,  while  visiting  his  Schoolmaster, 
"Troubled  Tom"  easily  convinced  him  that  genius  is  a 
form  of  insanity,  particularly  poetic  genius.  Both 
agreed  that  there  was  eminent  authority  for  the  con 
clusion.  Shakespeare  had  said  that  the  lunatic,  the 
lover,  and  the  poet  were  of  imagination  all  compact. 
The  Schoolmaster  went  on  to  explain  that  men  of 
genius  in  all  ages  were  men  of  strong  passions.  Riley 
added  that  they  were  necessarily  eccentric,  and  could 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN     239 

not  by  dint  of  any  virtue  travel  the  conventional  road. 
Men  of  average  talent  touched  life  on  a  few  sides  only. 
The  creative  spirit  was  not  in  them.  Hence  they  re 
garded  with  suspici6n  a  man  of  genius  who  touched  life 
on  many  sides.  Riley  had  noted  in  a  "British  Book" 
that  men  dull  in  comprehending  the  eccentricities  of  a 
great  painter,  set  down  what  surpassed  their  own 
understanding  to  the  account  of  the  painter's  stupidity. 
The  Schoolmaster  was  of  the  persuasion  that  genius 
is  little  in  little  things.  "The  mistake  the  people 
make,"  he  said,  "is  to  attribute  littleness  to  genius  in 
all  things."  Riley  complained  that  the  people  lacked 
impartiality  of  vision.  Everybody  in  his  own  degree, 
was  drugged  with  his  own  frenzy.  Why  deny  the 
luxury  to  the  poet?  It  was  a  matter  of  gradation.  The 
poet's  frenzy  was  higher  on  the  scale. 

Lunatic,  wise  man,  or  poet,  "Troubled  Tom"  had  his 
defenders.  By  no  means  were  "everything  and  every 
body  against  him,"  as  he  once  moaned  when  in  a 
melancholy  mood.  Young  people  were  for  him  and 
occasionally  his  elders.  His  near  neighbor,  Judge  Good- 
ing,  defended  him  as  brave  Sam  Johnson  vindicated 
Sheridan  and  substantially  in  the  same  language: 
"There  is  to  be  sure  something  in  the  fellow,"  said  the 
Judge,  "to  reprehend  and  something  to  laugh  at ;  *but 
Sir,  he  is  not  a  foolish  man.  No,  Sir ;  divide  mankind 
into  wise  and  foolish,  and  he  stands  considerably  with 
in  the  ranks  of  the  wise." 

When  faultfinders  were  numerous  there  was  one 
home  where  Riley  never  failed  to  find  encourage 
ment.  Mother  Millikan,  the  first  to  forecast  his  liter 
ary  future,  had  no  misgivings.  From  that  day  in  his 
teens  he  crossed  the  threshold  to  find  the  Sketch  Book 
on  her  center  table,  her  home  had  been  a  refuge  from 


240  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

dejection.  Her  daughter,  Nellie  Millikan,  was  uni 
formly  friendly  and  helpful.  According  to  the  aphor 
ism,  "those  who  befriend  genius  when  it  is  struggling 
for  distinction,  befriend  the  world."  Such  credit  be 
longs  to  the  Millikans.  Though  the  daughter  married 
and  moved  to  another  state,  her  faith  and  interest  in 
Riley  never  diminished.  Her  husband,  George  Cooley, 
was  equally  loyal.  "You  have  a  talent,"  he  wrote  from 
his  new  home  in  Illinois,  "that  is  sure  to  meet  with  just 
reward.  Go  on,  my  boy.  I  only  wish  it  were  in  my 
power  to  point  you  to  a  shorter  and  easier  road  to  fame 
than  that  you  have  been  compelled  to  travel.  My  word 
for  it,  the  time  will  come  when  it  will  not  be  Whit 
Riley  but  James  W.  Riley,  Esquire,  one  of  America's 
famous  poets." 

"Dear  James,"  Mrs.  Cooley  wrote  in  the  same  letter, 
"you  have  no  one  left  in  Greenfield  who  takes  the  same 
interest  in  you  that  I  did  or  who  is  so  proud  of  you 
when  people  write  me  that  you  'are  going  to  the  dogs/ 
How  will  they  feel  when  the  time  comes  that  all  who 
know  you  will  be  so  proud  to  take  you  by  the  hand? 
The  world  is  before  you.  You  are  standing  well  up  on 
the  ladder.  Grip  it  with  a  firm  hand,  be  determined  to 
reach  the  top.  You  are  young,  almost  a  boy.  Take 
good  care  of  your  health.  Do  not  let  the  late  hours 
that  bring  only  an  aching  head  the  next  day,  steal  away 
your  youthful  strength  and  rob  you  of  your  brightest 
thoughts.  Keep  them  to  give  to  the  world.  God  bless 
you." 

As  Riley  grew  in  years  and  experience  he  had  a  great 
deal  to  say  about  the  well-meant  intentions  of  friends 
that  were  more  harmful  than  helpful.  In  rhyme  he 
expressed  himself  this  way: 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN  241 

"Neglected  genius — truth  be  said — 
As  wild  and  quick  as  tinder, 
The  more  you  seek  to  help  ahead 
The  more  you  seem  to  hinder." 

The  encouragement  Nellie  Millikan  gave  him  disproved 
the  allegation.  She  did  not  chronicle  absurdities.  She 
did  not  forget  what  was  noble  and  excellent  in  a  man. 
She  saw  that  "God  twists  and  wrenches  our  evil  to  our 
good."  She  saw  merit  in  Riley's  irregular,  impassioned 
force.  Others  urged  him  to  paint  signs  on  country 
barns.  She  urged  him  to  stick  to  his  lead  pencil.  The 
fidelity  of  her  friendship  has  seldom  been  equaled.  She 
admonished  her  "Troubled  Tom"  to  trust  to  his  heart 
and  to  what  the  world  calls  illusions. 

His  reply  to  a  letter  from  her  was  characteristic  of 
him  at  that  time.    As  usual  he  indulged  in  idle  rhymes. 

"You  want  a  letter 
And  I've  not  a  line  of  prose — 
Wouldn't  'jingle'  answer  better? 
I  have  plenty,  Gracious  knows! 
For  my  mind  is  running  riot 
With  the  music  of  the  Muse." 

There  was  a  dearth  of  glad  hearts  and  no  sweet  voice 
to  quiet  "the  restless  pulse  of  care."  The  "old  crowd" 
was  widely  scattered.  The  ties  of  friendship  were 
tattered  and  raveled  at  the  ends,  and  the  social  circle 
was  dimmer 

"Than  a  rainy  afternoon, 
And  sheds  a  thinner  glimmer 
Than  the  ring  around  the  moon." 

The  past  was  like  a  story  to  which  he  had  listened  in  a 
dream,  he  went  on  in  a  metrical  moan.  It  was  vanish 
ing  in  the  glory  of  the  early  morning.  Glancing  at  his 
shadow  he  felt  the  loss  of  strength  while  the  Day  of 


242  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Life  was  advancing.  The  flight  of  time  gave  him 
scarcely  a  moment  "to  trip  it  with  a  rhyme."  Never 
theless  he  really  did  believe  his  "fame  was  growing 
stronger" ; 

"And  though  he  fell  below  it, 
He  might  know  as  much  of  mirth, 
To  live  and  die  a  poet 
Of  unacknowledged  worth ; 
For  Fame  is  but  a  vagrant, 
Though  a  loyal  one  and  brave, 
And  her  laurels  ne'er  so  fragrant 
As  when  scattered  o'er  the  grave." 

A  friend  once  remarked  that  "Riley  is  one  of 
those  men  who  appear  to  be  born  what  they  are  by 
some  accident  of  nature."  Riley  was  different.  To 
begin  with,  he  refused  to  be  born  "according  to 
the  tradition  of  the  register  books."  Following  a 
youthful  fancy,  he  made  a  little  memoir  of  himself  and 
changed  the  year  of  his  birth  from  1849  to  1853,  adopt 
ing  the  whim  of  Henry  Fuseli,  the  eccentric  painter, 
who  changed  his  birth  year  from  1741  to  1745.  At 
first  a  mere  freak,  it  became  in  later  years  a  matter  of 
serious  consideration  when  he  grew  sensitive  on  the 
question  of  his  age.  The  freak  was  a  source  of  confu 
sion  to  his  friends.  They  wrote  for  the  facts: 

"Mr.  James  W.  Riley,  the  man  of  great  mirth, 
Give  us  the  day  and  the  date  of  your  birth ; 
We  are  anxious  to  know  when  you  came  to  this  earth, 
Of  the  heavenly  planets  and  the  zodiac's  girth." 

He  dodged  the  planets,  humored  his  whim  and  returned 
an  evasive  answer. 

He  was  different.  When  a  boy  he  refused  to  be  put 
through  the  straight  jacket  system  of  education.  When 
ever  that  system  gave  scope  to  his  individuality 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN      243 

— all  too  seldom  he  thought  for  his  advancement — he 
was  its  willing  votary.  But  when  it  addressed  him 
exactly  in  the  same  manner  and  with  the  same  stand 
ards  it  addressed  other  boys,  his  heart  organized  an 
insurrection.  In  the  Shoe-Shop  he  was  warned  of  the 
danger  of  reducing  education  to  "the  careless,  fitful 
spirit  of  a  gamester  who  felt  that  he  was  a  part  of  a 
great  gaming  system."  He  once  remarked  of  a  little 
flock  of  visitors,  "I  can  not  endure  them ;  they  are  all 
alike — all  of  one  order — one  habit  of  thought.  I  feel 
like  a  wildcat  among  them/'  "I  can  remember/'  he  said 
when  grown  to  maturity,  "when  <I,  through  some 
strange  hallucination  that  victimized  me  for  a  season, 
had  a  desire  to  be  just  like  everybody  else.  I  was 
afraid  somebody  would  think  I  was  peculiar.  I  lived 
down  in  a  little  country  village  and  was  ashamed  to  let 
folks  know  I  lived  there.  I  did  not  fool  anybody. 
Everybody  knew  that  I  was  from  Greenfield.  If  I  were 
a  countryman  and  had  lived  on  an  eighty-acre  farm  all 
my  life  and  had  never  been  off  it,  I  would  brag  about 
that  farm.  I  would  swear  it  was  the  most  beautiful 
piece  of  property  under  the  light  of  heaven.  If  men 
doubted  it  I  would  tell  them  to  live  a  lifetime  on  just 
such  a  farm  and  then  they  would  know." 

He  was  different.  At  a  "skating  bee"  on  the  Missis- 
sinewa  River,  while  the  tide  of  glee  slid  merrily  on,  he 
sat  on  the  bank,  all  alone.  Skaters  came  to  him  with 
their  zestful  song: 

"0  come  with  us  and  we  will  go 
And  try  the  winter's  cold,  sir ; 
Nor  fear  the  ice,  nor  fear  the  snow, 
For  we  are  tough  and  bold,  sir." 

In  vain.  He  preferred  the  company  of  his  own 
thoughts.  "Think  of  it,"  Bill  Nye  remarked  at  a 


244  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

later  period,  "there  he  was,  just  a  sliver  in  the  great 
wood-pile  of  creation,  yet  fancying  he  heard  music 
from  the  breakers  far  away  on  the  restless,  rising  sea 
of  ambition." 

He  was  different — unfit  for  the  confusion  of  the 
world  yet  having  an  intimate  knowledge  of  it.  He 
knew  things  by  intuition.  "Speaking  of  intuitions,"  he 
said  in  an  interview  of  his  later  years,  giving  a  por 
trait  of  himself,  "I  knew  a  fellow  back  in  my  native 
town.  His  name — well,  he  had  a  law  office  with  a  bay- 
window  on  the  second  floor  of  a  building  on  Main 
Street.  He  was  a  quiet  chap ;  he  used  to  have  intuitions 
and  premonitions  and  all  that  sort  of  thing;  he  had 
quite  a  reputation  for  them.  Time  and  again  when  he 
saw  a  stranger  crossing  the  street,  he  would  tell  exactly 
to  what  building  and  to  what  office  he  was  going, — and 
his  forecast  was  usually  correct. 

"Well,  he  was  sitting  in  his  window  one  day  medi 
tating,  like  Mark  Twain's  frog,  when  he  noticed  a  crowd 
of  loafers  gathering  in  front  of  a  building  across  the 
way.  They  began  to  gaze  dreamily  up  at  a  man  on  a 
stepladder,  who,  with  his  back  to  them,  was  swinging 
up  a  shop  sign.  They  ail  stood  there,  quiet  and  silent, 
with  their  hands  behind  their  backs  when  he  remarked 
to  the  men  in  his  office  that  he  could  cause  a  stir  among 
the  dreamers,  yet  he  would  not  say  anything  or  do 
anything  other  than  go  over  among  them  for  a  moment. 
Then  he  put  himself  under  his  hat,  stuffed  his  hands  in 
his  pockets,  went  down-stairs,  crossed  the  street  and 
lazily  slipped  in  among  the  gazers.  No  one  moved,  no 
one  noticed  him ;  every  one  seemed  to  be  in  a  trance. 
After  a  minute  he  began  softly  to  whistle  an  old  famil 
iar  hymn,  'Shall  We  Gather  at  the  River.'  He  stopped 
at  the  end  of  the  second  line.  A  man  behind  him  un- 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAK  245 

consciously  took  up  the  tune  and  carried  it  along  and 
then  another  caught  on,  and  another,  and  soon  the 
whole  crowd  was  whistling  softly  or  half  humming  the 
melody — the  inoculator  in  the  meantime  returning  to 
his  law  office.  By  and  by  the  man  with  the  sign  started 
to  join  in  unconsciously,  but  for  some  reason  could  not 
quite  catch  the  thread  of  the  tune.  That  took  his  mind 
off  his  work,  and  since  his  work  at  that  moment  con 
sisted  in  balancing  the  heavy  sign  on  one  nail  and  him 
self  on  one  foot,  the  result  was  speedy  demoralization. 
The  sign  tumbled  down,  he  narrowly  escaped  death, 
besides  damaging  the  eye  of  a  spectator." 

Here,  in  a  trivial  incident  of  the  street,  is  a  glimpse 
of  Riley's  power  over  the  hearts  of  men.  "How  did  you 
do  that,  James?"  asked  his  associates  in  the  office. 
James  did  not  know.  It  was  a  mystery,  just  as  years 
afterward  his  power  over  an  audience  was  a  mystery. 
Nevertheless  "the  spells  of  persuasion,  the  keys  of 
power"  were  put  into  his  hands.  He  was  so 

"Self-centered,  that  when  he  launched  the  magic  word, 
It  shook  or  captivated  all  who  heard." 

"Robert  Collyer,"  said  an  Indiana  clergyman,  "can 
find  abundance  of  material  in  Greenfield  for  his  lecture 
on  'Blunders  of  Genius/  "  The  remark  was  occasioned 
by  Riley's  declining  to  quit  his  "literary  den"  to  attend 
a  revival.  He  was  different.  He  stood  alone  and  thus 
provoked  a  sharp  criticism  from  the  evangelist,  but  he 
fared  no  better  and  no  worse,  it  seems,  than  young  Pro 
fessor  Longfellow,  whose  failure  to  attend  a  "pro 
tracted  meeting"  met  with  similar  disapproval.  "I 
struck  my  critic,"  said  Riley,  "in  the  small  of  the  back 
with  a  large  chunk  of  silence.  I  had  my  pulpit  and 
Brother  Doe  had  his." 


246  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

It  may  be  said  here  parenthetically,  that  quite  early 
in  his  career  Riley  reached  the  conclusion  that  a  man's 
greatness  did  not  consist  in  believing  a  thing  because 
it  was  popular.  Ofttimes,  as  he  saw  it,  it  was  his  duty 
to  stand  for  a  thing  when  "all  the  cry  of  voices  was  on 
the  other  side."  Soon  after  he  reached  his  majority, 
he  found  a  paragraph  in  Hearth  and  Home,  an  editorial 
note  by  Ik  Marvel,  which  served  him  as  a  standard  of 
living  almost  two  score  and  ten  years.  "A  man's  true 
greatness,"  wrote  Marvel,  "lies  in  the  consciousness 
of  an  honest  purpose  through  life,  founded  on  a  just 
estimate  of  himself  and  everything  else,  on  frequent 
self-examination,  and  a  steady  obedience  to  the  rule 
which  he  knows  to  be  right,  without  troubling  himself 
about  what  others  may  think  or  say,  or  whether  they 
do  or  do  not  do  that  which  he  thinks  and  says  and 
does." 

"Troubled  Tom"  was  such  a  strange  young  man.  The 
more  abstruse  his  lines,  the  more  certainly  he  charac 
terized  himself : 

"He  would  chant  of  the  golden  wheat 
And  then  trill  a  biscuit-song  as  sweet 

As  poets  ever  know. 
Then  write  a  rhyme  on  theme  sublime, 
And  then  twirl  his  pen  as  of  yore 
And  write  a  lay  in  his  wildest  way 
Of  a  rival  grocery  store." 

He  unraveled  wild  and  wanton  fantasies  from  most 
improbable  sources.    "They  were  designed,"  he  wrote, 

"By  cunning  of  the  spider  brain — 
A  tangle-work  of  tissue,  wrought 
And  woven,  in  an  hour  of  pain, 
To  trap  the  giddy  flies  of  thought." 

The  image  of  himself  doing  strange  things  in  uncom- 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN     247 

mon  places  was  startling.  Sometimes  he  was  a 
truant  schoolboy  with  a  paper  kite  in  the  sky,  "unwind 
ing  syllables  of  gossamer  in  glimmering  threads  of 
speech,  and  leaving  at  their  ends  shadowy  thoughts 
that  lost  themselves  in  the  fleecy  clouds."  Sometimes 
he  was  a  cast-away  "unlocking  captive  lays  from  the 
dungeon  of  his  dismal  heart  that 

Would  make  the  world  turn  wonderingly  around, 
And  slake  its  thirsty  ear  with  harmony." 

Sometimes  he  was  a  desolate  dwarf  on  the  coast  of  a 
flying  island, 

"Where  only  remorse  in  pent  agony  lives 
To  dread  the  advice  that  his  grandmother  gives.77 

Such  a  strange  young  man.  He  wanted  to  idle  away 
weeks  and  write  in  some  obscure  hotel  room,  or  in  the 
shade  of  the  Brandywine  elms,  but  such  a  boon  the 
Fates  denied  him.  "It  was  not  like  Hamlet,"  he  said, 
"just  a  debate  in  my  mind  what  to  do.  I  literally  had 
to  take  up  arms  against  a  sea  of  troubles.  I  had  to 
suffer  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune." 
The  arrows  were  often  nothing  more  than  a  confusion 
of  ideas  concerning  the  properties,  but  the  confusion 
was  an  affliction  to  him,  and  it  turned  out — a  plague  for 
life.  His  clothes  were  not  cut  in  the  latest  style. 
Women  thought  he  should  be  at  their  command. 
He  should  while  away  the  rosy  hours  in  amuse 
ment.  He  should  talk  sentiment.  Not  at  all, 
thought  he.  So  he  set  about  doing  unaccountable 
things.  He  discounted  the  moon;  he  forgot  to  play; 
he  worked  at  night  and  slept  in  the  morning.  Un 
willing  to  countenance  his  infringements  of  custom, 
his  companions  soon  gave  him  up  as  an  incorrigible. 


248  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

To  add  to  his  discomfort,  he  lost  control  of  his  temper, 
when  some  defiance  of  his  wishes  seemed  to  justify 
anger,  and  frequently  (as  he  discovered  on  reflection) 
when  there  was  no  possible  justification.  "The  extra 
lemon,"  said  his  friend,  Myron  Reed,  "that  had  been 
squeezed  into  the  nectar  of  his  disposition  damaged 
its  flavor." 

He  would  pick  up  slips  of  paper  in  stores  or  offices 
to  keep  in  his  pocket  for  lead  pencil  memoranda.  He 
made  notes  while  other  men  worked  and  thus  was  fre 
quently  pointed  out  as  a  lounger.  When  the  days  were 
long  he  sought  sequestered  places  in  the  thickets  and 
fallen  tree-tops,  and  he  once  remained  hidden  away  in 
the  woods  in  spite  of  the  on-coming  rain. 

"In  those  rare  odd  times,  in  his  better  moods 
Some  rustic  verses  to  him  were  born, 
That  would  live,  perchance,  in  their  native  woods, 
As  long  as  the  crows  that  pull  the  corn." 

As  the  days  went  by,  a  lowering  shroud  of  dreams  en 
folded  him.  There  were  plaints  instead  of  rejoicing, 
and  "one  dismal  evening,"  (he  wrote  in  the  gloom) 
"when  the  grimy  hand  of  dusk  was  wiping  out  the  day 
with  spongy  clouds,  he  let  the  fire  die  out  in  his  room 
and  refused  to  light  the  lamp,  declaring  that  the  bur 
den  was  heavier  than  he  could  bear."  What,  he  won 
dered,  was  to  keep  his  heart  warm  when  friends  de 
serted  him,  when  birds  declined  to  sing,  when  difficulty 
seemed  a  mountain  and  success  a  foothill,  when  he 
sat  in  silence  and  gazed  at  the  sky  through  the  window 
"like  one  who  hears  it  rain"? 

"Many  men,"  he  remarked  half-seriously  a  decade 
after  his  dismal  experience,  "live  in  a  community  for 
years  and  years,  carefully  concealing  the  latent  poetry 
in  their  hearts,  and  pass  for  reputable  citizens ;  but  it 


THE  SIGN  ON  THE  COUNTRY  BARN 
Painted  bv  Rilev  in  1873 


Xi:\v  YORK  STORE  SIGN  AT  ANDERSON 

The  winds  came,  and  the  rain  fell ; 

The  gusty  panic  blew— 
It  mattered  not — the  L.  M.  Trees 

But  strong  and  stronger  grew 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN      249 

was  my  fate  by  an  unfortunate  current  of  events  very 
early  in  my  career  to  be  betrayed  and  branded  as  a 
poet." 

In  that  period  of  heart-heaviness  lie  was  seeking 
a  friendship  that  would  deeply  share  his  joys  and  sor 
rows.  He  would  compass  the  miracle  of  true  affection. 
He  had  a  surplus  of  professional  friends  whose  oblique 
remonstrations  "were  deeper  injuries  than  the  down 
right  blows  of  an  enemy."  Where  was  the  man  who 
would  lay  down  his  life,  if  it  be  necessary,  for  his 
friend?  The  heroic  example  of  Damon  and  Pythias 
was  largely  fiction.  It  should  be  truth,  he  thought,  the 
common  behavior  of  mankind.  He  was  seeking  the 
Thousandth  Man — 

"The  Thousandth  Man  will  stand  your  friend 
With  the  whole  round  world  ag'in  you." 

You  can  show  him  your  feelings.  He  will  bide  the 
shame  of  mockery  and  laughter.  He  will  stick  closer 
to  you  than  a  brother.  Riley's  hunger  for  friendship 
was  the  same  unsatisfied  longing  he  once  attributed  to 
the  heart  of  a  woman: 

"Where  art  thou,  Love,  still  lost  to  me 
In  unknown  deeps  of  destiny? 
Thou  man  of  men  the  fates  design 
For  me !    I  reach  my  hands  for  thine 
Across  the  darkness,  and  I  moan 
My  love  out  all  alone — alone. 

"But  yesterday  one  blithe  of  tongue, 
An  heir  of  fortune,  fair  and  young, 
Walked  with  me  down  the  gleaming  sands, 
And  of  a  sudden  caught  my  hands 
And  held  them,  saying  'All  mine  own !' 
And  yet  alone — alone — I  walked  alone." 


250  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

He  was  not  only  a  strange  young  man  but  he 
was  a  strange  middle-aged  man  and  a  strange  old 
man  (if  it  may  be  said  he  grew  old).  There  was  an 
other  Riley  back  of  the  visible  one  which  nobody  ever 
saw;  associates  saw  the  smiling  face  or  the  "iron 
mask,"  but  no  one  ever  saw  "the  light  behind  the  brow." 
"Away  inside  of  the  internal  man,"  said  he,  "is  another 
man  and  that  man  is  so  superior  to  the  inferior  one  in 
front  of  him  that  he  shades  his  eyes  with  his  arm  to 
hide  the  blush  and  shame.  The  altitude  of  the  superior 
man  is  so  great  that  the  inferior  can  not  reach  high 
enough  to  touch  him." 

To  Riley's  way  of  thinking,  friendship  was  as  inex 
plicable  as  poetry.  Efforts  to  explain  it  were  futile. 
From  Cicero  to  Emerson  it  was  largely  a  matter  of 
speculation.  Who  could  write  the  history  of  love? — 
and  friendship  without  love  was  as  barren  as  the  coast 
of  Enderby  Land.  A  passage  attributed  to  Gail  Ham 
ilton  expressed  his  view  with  accuracy  sufficient  for 
quotation.  "There  is  no  such  thing,"  says  she,  "as 
knowing  a  man  intimately.  Every  soul  is,  for  the 
greater  part  of  its  mortal  life,  isolated  from  every 
other.  Whether  it  dwells  in  the  Garden  of  Eden  or  the 
Desert  of  Sahara,  it  dwells  alone.  Not  only  do  we 
jostle  against  the  street-crowd  unknowing  and  un 
known,  but  we  go  out  and  come  in,  we  lie  down  and  rise 
up,  with  Strangers.  Jupiter  and  Neptune  sweep  the 
heavens  not  more  unfamiliar  to  us  than  the  worlds  that 
circle  our  hearthstone.  Day  after  day,  and  year  after 
year,  a  person  moves  by  our  side;  he  sits  at  the  same 
table ;  he  reads  the  same  books ;  he  kneels  in  the  same 
church.  We  speak  to  him ;  his  soul  comes  out  into  the 
vestibule  to  answer  us,  and  returns— and  the  gates  are 


THE  STRANGE  YOUNG  MAN     251 

shut;  therein  we  can  not  enter.  We  were  discussing 
the  state  of  the  country ;  but  when  we  ceased,  he  opened 
a  postern  gate,  went  down  a  bank,  and  launched  on  a 
sea  over  whose  waters  we  have  no  boat  to  sail,  no  star 
to  guide." 


CHAPTER  XII 

IN  THE  DARK 

JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  the  son  of  Harvard 
and  intellectual  Cambridge  and  Boston,  could  say 
with  royal  grace  that  no  man  is  born  into  the 
world  whose  work  is  not  born  with  him;  that 
there  is  always  work  and  tools  to  work  withal, 
for  those  who  will.  But  with  Whitcomb  Riley 
it  was  different.  His  work  was  born  with  him, 
but  the  tools  were  not  always  in  sight,  and  when  seen 
were  often  unavailable.  Like  Robert  Burns  he  had 
"materials  to  discover ;  the  metal  he  worked  in  lay  hid 
in  a  wilderness,"  where  few  if  any  before  him  "guessed 
its  existence.  He  found  himself  in  deep  obscurity, 
without  instruction,  without  model."  Until  his  twenty- 
seventh  year  he  was  "a  man  wandering  in  the  dark," 
waging  a  continual  war  with  Fortune,  and  groping  his 
way  by  the  aid  of  a  wandering  rather  than  a  fixed 
star.  His  genius  was  little  more  than  "the  capacity  for 
receiving  discipline." 

It  always  distressed  him  that  vast  numbers  of  people 
were  unhappy  in  their  occupations.  He  deplored  the 
vain  endeavor  of  men  and  women  to  be  what  nature 
never  intended,  "groping,  floundering,"  he  once  crudely 
expressed  it,  "going  round  and  round  and  round,  never 
getting  any  sand  on  the  track." 

He  knew  of  no  reason  why  men  should  not  "sing  at 
their  work  as  merrily  as  a  flock  of  robins  in  a  cherry 
tree  at  sunrise."  He  was  persuaded  that  each  man  has 

252 


IN  THE  DARK  253 

an  unquestionable  right  to  an  unquestionable  place,  "an 
aptitude  born  with  him  to  do  easily  some  feat  impos 
sible  to  any  other.  Blessed  is  the  right  man  in  the 
right  place."  Do  but  the  tenth  part  of  what  you  can  do, 
said  the  old  "British  Book,"  and  fame  and  fortune  will 
be  the  result. 

"The  camel's  hump  is  an  ugly  hump, 
Which  well  you  may  see  at  the  Zoo ; 
But  uglier  yet  is  the  hump  we  get 
From  having  too  little  to  do" — 

not  having  the  right  thing  to  do,  added  Riley  so  em 
phatically  that  Kipling  most  likely  would  have  gladly 
made  the  change. 

While  riding  one  day  in  the  "Buckeye"  with  the 
"Standard  Remedy"  vender,  Riley  came  to  a  blacksmith 
shop,  with  a  smoky  sign  above  the  door :  Come  In  And 
See  Me  Work.  What  he  found,  on  entering  the  shop, 
was  truly  a  revelation — a  man  unspeakably  happy  be 
cause  he  had  found  his  place.  Farmers  loved  to  hear 
his  bellows  blow.  Pedlers  and  children  laughed  and 
talked  with  him  as  they  passed.  He  was  a  poet,  too. 
"The  smoke  from  the  forge,"  said  he,  "is  wild  ivy.  See 
it  creep  up  the  walls  and  cling  to  the  rafters."  He 
gladly  looked  the  whole  country  round  in  the  face — 
there  was  so  much  honesty  and  fair  play  in  the  world. 
He  was  an  efficient  smithy,  but  more  than  that ;  he  was 
a  success  at  the  "flaming  forge  of  life."  The  sparks 
that  flew  from  his  anvil  envied  the  smiles  on  his  face; 

"His  heart  was  in  his  work — and  the  heart 
Giveth  grace  unto  every  Art." 

It  is  not,  thought  Riley,  musing  on  his  "discovery," 
that  a  man  must  be  a  poet  or  an  orator,  or  a  geologist 
in  order  to  be  happy.  The  solution  of  the  problem  was 


254       %      JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

this :   "Find  the  niche  nature  designed  you  to  fill  and 
enter  it  with  thanksgiving." 

He  passed  the  shop  in  the  summer  of  1872.  Thence 
onward  for  four  years,  one  question  incessantly  called 
for  an  answer:  What  is  my  mission?  Where  is  my 
place?  "It  was  uppermost  in  my  thought,"  said  he — 
"the  very  dog-fennel  at  the  roadside  whispered  it  as  I 
bowled  from  town  to  town." 

"Where  are  they—the  Afterwhiles — 
Luring  us  the  lengthening  miles 
Of  our  lives  ?    Where  is  the  dawn 
With  the  dew  across  the  lawn? 
Where  the  sun  that  smites  the  frown 
Of  the  eastward-gazer  down?" 

"I  have  been  a  happy  man,"  said  Henry  Fuseli,  "for 
I  have  always  been  employed  in  doing  what  I  liked." 
Riley  could  not  forget  the  fact  that  the  British  painter 
was  eighty  years  old  when  he  said  it.  The  secret  of  his 
joy — how  did  the  painter  find  it?  Was  it  due  to  Lava- 
ter's  speculations  in  Physiognomy?  There  was  a  "the 
atrical  description"  of  those  speculations  which  (mirth 
ful  as  it  seemed  afterward)  claimed  young  Riley's 
serious  attention.  Lavater  held  that  the  human  figure 
signified  its  nature — human  features  expressed  char 
acter.  The  history  of  an  individual,  future  as  well  as 
past,  could  be  read  in  the  face  as  one  would  read  from 
a  printed  page.  Perhaps  the  eminent  phrenologist  had, 
after  all,  really  helped  Fuseli.  He  had  told  the  painter 
that  his  profile  indicated  energy  —  the  mouth 
promised  a  spirit  of  application  —  the  nose 
seemed-  to  be  the  seat  of  intrepid  genius — 
and  so  forth.  At  any  rate,  Riley  was  bent  on 
finding  out  what  a  phrenologist  thought  of  his  profile. 
While  "sojourning"  in  Marion,  Indiana,  in  November, 


IN  THE  DARK  255 

1872,  the  opportunity  came  at  White's  Hall.  The  Emi 
nent  Physiognomist  and  Delineator  of  Character,  Doc 
tor  James  Hedley,  came  from  St.  Louis  to  deliver  eight 
lectures.  Riley  attended  them — with  what  result,  he 
tells  us  in  his  jovial  way  in  "An  Adjustable  Lunatic" : 

"No  one  ever  reads  my  character"  (says  the  lunatic) 
— "no  one  ever  will.  Why,  I've  had  phrenologists  grop 
ing  around  among  my  bumps  by  the  hour  to  no  purpose, 
and  physiognomists  driving  themselves  cross-eyed ;  but 
they  never  found  it  and  never  will.  The  very  things 
of  which  I  am  capable  they  invariably  place  beyond  my 
capacity;  and,  with  like  sageness,  the  very  things  I 
can't  do  they  declare  me  to  be  a  master  hand  at.  Why, 
old  Fowler  himself  (Doctor  Hedley)  here  the  other 
night,  thumped  my  head  as  mellow  as  a  May-apple,  and 
never  came  within  a  mile  of  it." 

Nor  could  a  man  be  explained  and  his  place  in  the 
world  be  determined  by  genealogy.  In  that  uncertain 
period  and  on  several  occasions  afterward,  Riley  ex 
pressed  himself  unreservedly  on  the  subject.  Doctor 
S.  Weir  Mitchell  once  remarked  to  him  that  genius  is  a 
glad  freak  of  nature  in  a  good  humor.  "In  a  very  im 
portant  sense,"  said  the  Doctor,  "it  has  neither  grand 
father  nor  grandchild."  "Fishing  for  a  pedigree," 
Riley  added,  "does  not  make  a  man  successful."  Family 
pride,  this  thing  of  tracing  ancestry  back  to 
William  the  Conqueror — there  was  nothing  in 
it.  "Man  is  his  own  ancestor."  He  liked  the  fig 
ure  which  made  a  great  man  a  mountain  with  the 
valley  of  his  ancestors  on  one  side  and  the  depression 
of  posterity  on  the  other.  He  and  John  Hay  once  joked 
about  their  nationality.  They  were  not  chance  children, 
they  said.  They  could  trace  their  genealogy  all  the  way 
back  to  their  parents.  They  were  alike  in  that  they 


256  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

had  back  of  them  a  little  Scotch,  a  little  English,  a  little 
German  and  a  little  French,  but  not  enough  of  any  one 
to  make  them  anything  but  American.  "I  am  Irish," 
said  Riley,  "from  the  word  go.  I  show  it  in  my  tastes, 
I  show  it  in  my  face — my  face  is  a  map  of  Ireland. 
My  father's  grandfather  was  Irish,  and  came  from 
Cork  or  some  old  place  over  there,  but  never,  when  in 
my  right  mind,  do  I  attribute  my  success  to  that  fact. 
Did  you  ever  try  to  count  your  ancestors?"  he  asked, 
while  Hay  still  chuckled  over  his  Irish  sally.  "W'y, 
I  had  so  many  great,  great,  great,  great  grandparents 
they  could  not  crowd  through  the  Alleghanies.  Most 
of  them  had  to  remain  on  the  other  side." 

In  those  years  of  uncertainty,  prior  to  1876,  Riley 
was  at  sea  without  compass.  "I  was  floundering,"  he 
said,  "from  Devil's  Den  to  Dismal  Slough"  (a  figura 
tive  expression  based  on  literal  fact,  a  trip  he  once 
made  in  the  "Buckeye"  through  a  swampy  region  in 
Tipton  County) .  "Why  is  it,"  he  asked,  "that  mortals 
in  their  efforts  to  find  their  place  in  the  world  have  to 
search  for  it  through  the  driving  rain  of  blinding  tears, 

While  put  across  the  deeps  of  night 
They  lift  the  sails  of  prayer  ? 
Why  voyage  off  in  quest  of  light 
Nor  find  it  anywhere?" 

A  less  dismal  picture  presented  itself  one  morning 
while  riding  along  on  an  upper  tributary  of  White 
water.  A  bobolink  pitched  from  the  summit  of  a  tree 
to  the  bosom  of  a  meadow  just  as  Riley  had  seen  him 
pictured  in  the  old  McGuffey  Reader.  The  fluttering 
songster  was  all  sunshine,  all  sensibility  and  enjoy 
ment.  He  was  literally  overcome  with  the  ecstasy  of 
his  own  music.  The  meadow  was  his  place — his  home. 


IN  THE  DARK  257 

"The  bobolink,"  remarked  Riley,  "plays  first  fiddle  all 
the  time." 

While  scurrying  through  the  country,  "silently  and 
slowly  working  out  the  train  of  indecisions  in  his 
mind,"  Riley  was  busy  with  the  study  of  means  to 
ends.  While  the  "Buckeye"  wound  through  a  lumber 
section  one  day,  he  caroled  the  song  of  the  saw-mill : 

"They  who  turn  the  whizzing  wheel  of  labor  should  be 
blessed 

With  such  return  as  life-long  efforts  earn, 
And  in  the  arms  of  Fortune,  warmly  pressed 

Without  a  fever-thought  of  care  to  burn 
The  peaceful  brow  that  sinks  to  blissful  rest." 

There  was  the  farmer,  "the  founder  of  human  civiliza 
tion,"  who  seemed  to  be  solving  the  problem  for  all 
men.  The  earth  provided  the  soil — and  tools  were  also 
provided.  "There  were  harrows,"  he  jingled, 

'"There  were  reapers  and  mowers, 
And  patent  grain  sowers, 
And  drillers  and  tillers, 
And  cucumber  hillers — 
And  all  the  long  list  of  a  thousand  or  more 
That  were  found  at  the  old  Agricultural  Store." 

Why  should  there  not  be  tools  for  the  artist,  or  poet? 
— a  vast  storehouse  somewhere  on  which  he  might 
draw  forevermore.  "Why  this  floundering!"  he  ex 
claimed  to  his  traveling  chum,  bewailing  the  sad  lot  of 
poets ;  "7  can  find  no  more  happiness  in  a  hub  and  spoke 
factory" — and  while  they  drove  by  a  factory  at  Wabash 
the  jingle  dripped  from  his  lips: 

"The  hands  are  as  busy 
As  so  many  bees 
Who  work  themselves  dizzy 
In  blossoming  trees ; 


258  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

And  all  the  Jong  hours 
From  morning  till  night 
Their  hearts  are  as  flowers 
That  blossom  delight/' 

It  was  all  a  question  of  knowing  where  to  go,  what 
to  do  and  how  to  do  it. 

"Gracious  God!"  exclaimed  Bill  Nye,  referring  to 
Riley's  ignorance  of  his  mission,  "he  was  blind  as  the 
fish  in  Echo  River.  There  he  was  in  the  vast  store 
house  of  the  Land  of  Used-To-Be,  the  shapeless  masses, 
the  tools,  the  materials  all  about  him.  The  tinkle  of 
bells  and  fairy  bugles  were  calling  to  him,  but  he  was 
dull  of  hearing.  From  day  to  day  capital  facts  of 
existence  were  hidden  from  his  eyes.  Suddenly  in 
1876,  the  mist  rolled  up  and  revealed  them.  He  was 
like  a  sheep-herder  I  knew  in  Wyoming,  who  had  been 
cooped  up  in  a  little  eggshell  valley  for  twenty  years. 
One  day  he  concluded  to  stroll  farther  away  from  the 
corral  than  he  had  ever  strolled  before.  He  ascended 
a  high  hill  when  lo!  the  snow-covered  summits  of  the 
Rockies  burst  upon  his  wondering  eyes.  There  stretch 
ing  hundreds  of  miles  from  north  to  south  were  the 
blue  fields  of  the  sublime." 

In  those  misty  days  Riley  was  far  from  home.  He 
was  the  sea-swallow  among  the  rooks  and  rushes  of 
the  land,  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  describes : 

"Far  from  the  loud  sea-beaches, 
Where  he  goes  fishing  and  crying, 
Here  in  the  inland  garden 
Why  is  the  sea-gull  flying? 

"There  are  no  fish  to  dive  for; 
Here  is  the  corn  and  lea ; 
Here  are  the  green  trees  rustling, 
Hie  away  home  to  the  sea. 


IN  THE  DARK  259 

"  "Pity  the  bird  that  has  wandered ! 
Pity  the  sailor  ashore! 
Hurry  him  home  to  the  ocean, 
Let  him  come  here  no  more ! 

"High  on  the  sea-cliff  ledges, 
The  white  gulls  are  trooping  and  crying ; 
Here  among  rooks  and  roses, 
Why  is  the  sea-gull  flying?" 

Why  should  a  poet  be  tossing  among  paint  buckets, 
sign-boards  and  concert  wagons  ?  Why  should  he  have 
to  beg  for  bread  in  Grub  Street?  Why  hitch  Pegasus 
to  a  plow,  or  condemn  Apollo  to  pasture  flocks  for 
Admetus?  The  first  consideration  for  success  in  any 
field  was  this,  that  a  man  find  real  satisfaction,  real 
romance  in  his  work.  There  were  some  things,  as 
Ruskin  said,  men  must  do  for  bread,  but  they  were  not 
called  upon  to  do  anything  into  which  they  could  not 
put  their  hearts.  "See  the  young  men  from  the  halls 
of  learning,"  wrote  Robert  Burdette,  from  his  Burling 
ton  sanctum.  "Of  the  twenty-three  who  recently 
stepped  across  the  threshold  of  life  from  an  Eastern 
college,  eleven  are  clerking  in  an  auction  store  at  four 
teen  dollars  a  month,  one  is  running  a  fish-boat,  two 
are  learning  the  house-painting  trade,  and  one  is 
starving  to  death  in  a  law  office." 

"My  Funny  Fellow,"  remarked  Riley,  commenting 
on  the  humorous  item,  "can  be  meek  as  a  Quaker.  When 
he  wrote  that  he  was  as  solemn  as  an  undertaker.  He 
was  jesting,  but  what  he  wrote  was  not  a  jest.  There 
is  something  wrong — whether  a  man  is  self-educated 
or  college-educated — when  his  work  is  not  in  harmony 
with  his  natural  bent." 

While  dizzy  with  uncertainties,  Riley  went  one  night 
to  see  Peg  Woffington  played  at  the  old  Metropolitan 


260  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Theater  in  Indianapolis.  Scenes  in  the  first  and  fourth 
acts — the  Green  Room  of  the  Theater  Royal  and  Con 
vent  Garden — were  but  vaguely  remembered ;  but  what 
happened  in  Triplet's  lodgings  impressed  him  deeply. 
The  cramped  apartment  was  on  a  narrow  back  street 
in  London.  "Bricked  in  on  all  sides  like  a  tomb,  it  was 
always  solitary,  always  shady  and  sad."  Theater  pa 
trons  of  forty  years  ago  will  recall  that  Triplet  was 
a  man  ambitious  to  be  a  painter,  actor  and  dramatist, 
but  who  in  reality  was  a  "goose"  and  had  no  genius 
either  for  writing,  painting  or  acting.  He  was  trying 
to  support  an  invalid  wife  and  four  starving  children. 
He  had  submitted  tragedies  to  a  theatrical  manager. 
They  had  been  returned  without  a  word.  The  real 
tragedy  came  when  Triplet  realized  the  full  weight  of 
the  blow.  Then  a  sigh  escaped  him.  The  poor,  rejected 
tragedies  fell  to  the  ground  and  he  buried  his  head  in 
his  hands. 

Then  the  resourceful  Wofnngton  entered  Triplet's 
apartment  with  a  basket  of  refreshments.  When 
she  had  satisfied  the  hungry  family  with  food, 
she  seized  his  fiddle  and  showed  him  another  of 
her  enchantments.  She  played  to  the  eye  as 
well  as  to  the  ear  and  with  such  radiance  that  the 
children  could  not  sit  in  their  chairs;  they  could  not 
keep  still.  She  jumped  up;  so  did  they.  She  gave  a 
wild  Irish  horroo.  She  put  the  fiddle  in  Triplet's 
hands.  He  played  like  Paganini.  Woffington  covered 
the  buckle  in  gallant  style  (said  Charles  Reade,  to 
whom  Riley  as  well  as  the  actors  were  indebted  for  the 
story).  A  great  sunbeam  had  come  into  their  home. 
They  put  their  hands  to  their  hearts;  they  looked  at 
one  another,  and  then  at  the  goddess  who  had  revived 
them.  A  few  moments  before,  they  were  sorrowful 


IN  THE  DARK  261 

and  hopeless.  Now  joy  was  in  their  hearts,  and  sorrow 
and  sighing  were  fled. 

"It  was  magical,"  said  Riley,  borrowing  the  novel 
ist's  thought,  "that  a  mortal  could  so  magnetize  the 
soul  of  man.  To  enter  the  home  of  the  poor  and  tune 
drooping  hearts  to  daylight  and  hope — there  is  no 
nobler  mission  than  that.  Woffington  did  what  she 
could  for  Triplet,  but  the  Fates  had  other  things  in 
store.  They  thumped  him  some  more.  The  managers 
rejected  other  tragedies.  He  failed  in  comedy.  God 
knows  it  took  a  long  while  to  break  his  heart,  but  at 
last  it  was  broken — broken — quite  broken.  The  only 
hit  he  made  was  an  inheritance  of  twenty  thousand 
pounds — and  a  somewhat  happy  exit  the  year  our 
Great  Washington  died." 

All  through  the  play  and  weeks  after,  one  thought 
was  paramount  in  Riley 's  mind — the  tragedy  of  unrec 
ognized  genius.  "Triplet  was  a  goose,"  said  he,  "but 
all  are  not  geese  who  struggle  for  recognition.  Was 
I  a  goose?  Or,  what  is  more  tragic,  was  I  an  im 
prudent  genius?  Was  I  to  struggle  for  years  with 
difficulties  and  sink  at  last,  as  Emerson  said,  chilled, 
exhausted  and  fruitless,  like  a  giant  slaughtered  by 
pins?  I  was  in  the  dark." 

There  was  Triplet.  Nothing  that  had  happened  upon 
the  great  stage  of  the  world  seemed  real  to  him.  Was 
that  the  way  of  all  the  earth?  Were  there  no  such 
things  as  hearts  and  firesides  and  reward  for  happy 
endeavor?  Was  it  all  paint  and  paste  and  diamonds — 
all  chance  and  anarchy?  Was  it  true  that  "life  is  a  tale 
told  by  an  idiot" — that  man  is  "a  walking  shadow — a 
poor,  poor  player,  who  frets  and  struts  his  hour  upon 
the  stage,  and  then  is  heard  no  more"  ? 

To  add  to  the  winter  of  his  discontent  Riley  was 


262  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

afflicted  with  that  insidious  Hoosier  malady,  known  as 
the  blues.    His  plight  is  best  told  in  his  own  words : 

"I  admit,"  he  wrote  Mary  Hartwell  Catherwood, 
"that  I  have  long  fondled  the  actual  belief  that 
I  am  a  poet,  but  it  pains  me  to  add  that  I  have 
latterly  received  such  evidence  to  the  contrary  that  I 
have  no  hope  of  ever  proving  it  to  the  world.  But 
believe  me,  I  am  glad  to  know  that  others  are  succeed 
ing  while  I  fail.  From  the  very  opening  remark  you 
make  regarding  your  own  productions,  I  judge  that 
your  work  commands  remuneration,  which  certainly 
must  be  marvelous  encouragement.  I  am  sure  that  all 
the  poems  I  have  ever  written,  if  bundled  together, 
would  not  bring  as  much  in  market  value  as  a  bundle 
of  radishes.  In  fact,  I  never  succeeded  in  selling  but 
one  poem  in  my  life,  and  I  think  there  must  have  been 
some  fatal  mistake  about  that,  for  the  editor  when  I 
next  wrote,  gleefully  offering  him  another  effort,  wrote 
me  saying  he  regretted  that  the  sudden  suspension  of 
the  magazine  since  the  publication  of  my  first  poem 
compelled  the  return  of  my  second.  And  I  have  always 
thought  the  death  of  that  hitherto  prosperous  publica 
tion  was  on  my  hands.  And  so  I  worry  on,  but  will 
you  forgive  me?  I  meant  to  write  more  briefly  and  say 
something.  I  have  done  neither." 

In  that  period  of  confusion,  Riley  was  perplexed, 
distressed  sometimes  by  relatives  and  friends  giving 
him  advice — the  complacency  of  dull  old  men  lecturing 
fiery  youth  on  plans  of  study  and  habits  of  thought. 
Like  the  mysterious  lodger  in  Old  Curiosity  Shop,  he 
wanted  to  do  as  he  liked :  "I  want  to  go  to  bed  when  I 
like,  get  up  when  I  like,  come  in  when  I  like,  go  out 
when  I  like — to  be  asked  no  questions,  and  be  sur 
rounded  by  no  spies." 


IN  THE  DARK  263 

Well-meaning  friends  were  innocently  in  league  with 
the  fickle  impulses  of  his  own  nature,  furiously  com 
manding  him  to  do  this  and  do  that.  Listening  to  them 
he  fancied  himself  "poor,  orphaned,  insignificant.  What 
was  he  that  he  should  resist  their  will  and  think  and 
act  for  himself?  Every  week  new  showers  of  decep 
tions  to  baffle  and  distract  him."  There  were  sign- 
painting  showers  that  a  few  years  before  would  have 
hurried  him  to  the  paintshop  on  wings.  One  order 
from  an  advertising  agent  for  a  dozen  signs — one  gro 
cery — one  dry  goods — one  drug — one  sewing  machine 
— one  clothing — one  boots  and  shoes — one  stoves  and 
tinware :  in  addition,  one  jewelry  (watches  and  clocks) , 
one  planing  mill  representing  laths,  shingles,  dressed 
lumber,  and  such  material  as  mills  turn  out ;  one  hotel 
suitable  to  put  in  one  newspaper  column,  the  rest 
suitable  for  two  columns  in  county  papers — all  made 
in  form  of  a  rebus  and  ready  for  engraver  in  ten  days. 

Again  there  came  an  inquiry  from  a  friend  "down 
in  Old  Monroe,"  who  wanted  to  know  the  price  of 
county  cards,  barn  cards,  fence  cards  and  so  forth. 
There  were  several  good  sign-painting  prospects  in 
Bloomington.  "Now,  old  fellow,"  said  the  letter, 
"come  speedily.  Telegraph  me  yes  if  you  can  come; 
if  not,  telegraph  me  no.  One  sign  is  gold  leafing,  a 
prescription  case  in  a  drug  store;  another  is  a  fancy 
sign  for  a  butcher.  Come  immediately.  I  have  the 
'rocks'  in  my  jeans  to  pay  your  board  for  a  month." 

There  came  also  a  call  from  the  "Graphics."  One  of 
their  number  had  closed  a  contract  in  "Old  Virginny" 
to  advertise  a  tobacco  company.  "I  want  you  for  a 
partner,"  he  wrote.  "They  guarantee  fifty  dollars  a 
week  and  probably  one  hundred  dollars.  I  can  make 
it  sure  one  hundred  and  fifty  dollars  a  week  for  us  two. 


264  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

They  want  a  sign  of  a  log  cabin  with  a  negro  in  the 
door,  red  shirt  and  so  forth.  Make  it  on  8  by  10 
paper.  Make  it  hot.  Send  to  Lynchburg  and  I  will 
work  up  the  finest  snap  of  the  year." 

These  orders  and  inquiries,  and  others  of  like  char 
acter  received  indifferent  attention.  The  "rising  litter 
ateur"  painted  an  occasional  sign,  but  the  business  was 
growing  more  and  more  incongruous.  Fortune  knows 
he  sorely  needed  the  "rocks,"  but  he  was  disinclined  to 
pursue  them  at  his  old  trade.  "There  is  a  delightful 
tang  to  greenbacks,"  he  remarked,  "but  it  is  not  engrav 
ing  orders  I  need  now.  I  need  a  Peg  Woffington  who 
will  loan  me  fifty  pounds  to  be  paid  at  Doomsday." 

Fifteen  years  later,  while  touring  Scotland,  Riley 
reverted  to  the  days  when  he  was  distressed  with  debt. 
"The  most  mortifying  picture  in  all  experience,"  he 
said,  "is  a  man  like  Robert  Burns  commissioned  of 
Heaven  to  write  tender  human  verse,  and  having  at  the 
same  time  to  make  a  wretched  appeal  for  money,  a 
pitiful  cry  for  a  loan  to  provide  against  the  commonest 
household  necessities.  When  I  entered  the  house  where 
Burns  died,  and  walked  through  the  kitchen  and  up 
the  winding  stairway  to  the  room  where  he  wrote  his 
songs,  I  could  hear  above  everything  else  the  echo  of 
his  cry.  It  is  fine  in  Franklin  to  look  back  and  write 
pleasantly  about  the  time  when  he  was  poor  and  home 
less,  but  I'll  wager  a  town  lot  that  life  was  not  romantic 
when  he  had  but  one  loaf  of  bread  in  Philadelphia. 
The  sunlight  is  on  the  other  side  of  the  earth  when  a 
man  faces  a  misty  future." 

Writing  the  "Golden  Girl,"  a  brilliant  young  woman, 
who  was  then — November,  1876 —  in  search  of  health 
in  the  Black  River  pine  woods  of  Wisconsin,  Riley 
disavowed  interest  in  things  that  once  claimed  a  large 


IN  THE  DARK  265 

share  of  his  attention.  "My  going  with  the  Graphics," 
he  said,  "seems  not  to  suit  you  any  better  than  it  does 
me.  I  don't  know  that  I  shall  go  with  them  after  all. 
You  have  no  idea  how  distasteful  it  is  to  me.  I 
some  way  feel  as  though  I  were  being  made  a  tool  of  to 
advance  the  interests  of  those  who  would  smile  to  think 
'what  a  fool  he  is.'  Since  my  reformation  I  begin  to 
feel  an  unusual  sense  of  my  importance  and  if  I  do 
lower  myself  to  some  uncongenial  pursuit,  it  will  be 
because  an  adverse  fate  drives  me  to  it.  I  have  heard 
nothing  further  from  the  Graphics  since  my  last  letter 
to  you,  and  I  believe  I  am  happier.  I  wish  I  could 
make  my  living,  for  I  am  tired  of  the  brush.  I  have 
been  very  busily  occupied  with  literary  matters.  I 
have  had  a  perfect  hemorrhage  of  inspiration,  produc 
ing  quite  a  number  of  poems  and  of  better  quality  than 
ever.  I  have  written  to  Longfellow,  Trowbridge  and 
two  or  three  lesser  literary  lights  and  enclosed  them 
'samples'  of  my  fancy  work;  and  with  every  reason 
to  believe  I  shall  have  gratifying  comments  from  them 
all." 

Referring  afterward  to  the  "hemorrhage  of  inspira 
tion,"  Riley  said  he  wrote  all  night — "wrote  till  the 
rooster  went  into  ecstasy  on  the  subject  of  daylight." 

One  "blue"  day  in  autumn  he  wrote  his  friend, 
B.  S.  Parker  of  Newcastle,  a  letter  which  occa 
sioned  the  latter's  reply  in  October,  1876,  the 
year  "Blue  Jeans"  Williams  defeated  Benjamin 
Harrison  for  governor.  "How  do  you  expect 
one  at  such  a  time,"  asks  Parker,  "to  think  of  any- 
think  but  the  blues — 'Blue  Jeans/  blue  times  and 
blue  devils?  I  think  a  man  who  has  a  soul  above  but 
tons,  and  who  occasionally  hears  the  soft  whispers  of 
the  Muse  ought  not  to  allow  himself  to  become  inter- 


266  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

ested  in  politics  (nor  in  sign-painting  and  the  law, 
added  Riley  parenthetically) .  A  poet  must  be  a  vaga 
bond  in  a  certain  sense  if  he  would  not  fail  to  discover 
the  good  that  is  in  him.  I  do  not  mean  that  he  should 
travel  like  a  gipsy  or  play  the  tramp  or  starve  and 
freeze  by  turns,  but  that  he  should  not  feel  that  exist 
ence  is  a  thing  to  which  no  man  has  a  just  right  unless 
he  becomes  of  use  to  bankers,  horse-swappers,  curb 
stone  brokers  and  the  like.  In  other  words,  if  I  could 
live  my  little  life  over,  I  would  be  content  to  be  a  poet 
and  scribbler  and  only  enter  the  so-called  business  field 
just  so  far  as  was  necessary  to  life,  liberty  and  the 
pursuit  of  happiness." 

There  came  also  a  letter  from  another  friend,  the 
fluent  temperance  advocate,  Luther  Benson,  who  had 
fought  Demon  Rum  from  boyhood.  He  knew  from 
experience  that  life  can  be  a  nightmare  of  mockery, 
as  he  mournfully  expressed  it,  a  black,  rayless  waste 
of  desolation.  "I  feel  that  neither  of  us,"  he  wrote, 
"could  make  a  meal  on  pleasure.  I  am  handcuffed  to 
misery  and  chained  to  agony."  Riley  was  painfully 
conscious  of  a  kindred  affliction,  but  more  acute  than 
this  was  the  pain  he  suffered  from  the  darkness  that 
obscured  his  choice  of  an  occupation.  His  father 
saw  no  hope  of  success  for  him  in  the  literary  field. 
There  was  a  squib  in  the  law  office  which  the  father 
once  read  aloud  in  the  hope  of  discouraging  his  son's 
literary  ambition.  That  the  son  might  feel  its  sting 
he  read  it  in  the  presence  of  brother  attorneys : 

"What  are  the  poets,  take  them  as  they  fall, 
Good,  bad,  rich,  poor,  much  read,  not  read  at  all? 
Them  and  their  works  in  the  same  class  you'll  find* 
They  are  the  mere  waste-paper  of  mankind." 

Evidently  the  attorneys  and  the  father  made  some 


IN  THE  DARK  267 

impression  on  the  youthful  poet,  for  it  is  a  matter  of 
record  that  he  promised  his  father  he  "would  not  waste 
his  days  writing  poetry."  Almost  immediately  the 
Muse  turned  the  promise  down.  As  Longfellow 
wrote  "The  Spirit  of  Poetry"  and  "The  Song  of 
the  Birds"  in  a  law  office,  so  Riley  wrote  "An  Old 
Sweetheart"  and  "If  I  Knew  What  Poets  Know."  He 
kept  his  "law  office  poems,"  as  he  called  them,  in  his 
desk  under  lock  and  key  for  several  weeks,  did  not  have 
the  courage  to  let  his  father  or  the  attorneys  know 
what  he  was  doing.  The  latter  poem  was  written  in  one 
forenoon.  "I  commenced  writing,"  said  Riley,  "but 
had  great  difficulty  in  getting  it  under  way.  While 
thrumming  abstractedly  with  my  pencil,  my  shoes  at 
tracted  my  attention  and  I  decided  to  have  them  half- 
soled.  I  went  immediately  from  the  office  down  the 
stairway  into  the  street,  making  directly  for  the  shoe- 
shop  across  the  way.  I  remember  the  street  was 
muddy.  Before  reaching  the  shop,  I  stopped,  turned 
about,  retraced  my  steps  to  the  office  and  wrote  the 
poem  rapidly  to  its  conclusion.  I  had  to  labor  on  it — it 
didn't  just  make  itself,  but  in  a  short  time  it  was 
finished;  I  had  the  shoes  repaired  in  the  afternoon." 

He  yearned  for  the  opinion  of  friends  on  "An  Old 
Sweetheart,"  but  was  somewhat  at  a  loss  to  know  just 
how  to  direct  their  attention  to  the  poem.  He  mailed 
a  copy  to  the  "Golden  Girl,"  who  from  the  first 
had  been  displeased  over  his  waste  of  time  in  the  law 
office.  "If  you,"  he  asked,  referring  to  the  poem,  "were 
sending  this  fiction  of  an  overwrought  brain  to  friends, 
what  would  you  say  about  it?"  She  promptly  put  her 
self  in  his  place  and  returned  the  following: 

"In  humbly  and  almost  fearfully  submitting  this 
last  fiction  of  an  overwrought  brain  to  the  unappre- 


268  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

ciative  and  ofttimes  careless  care  of  the  U.  S.  Mail, 
I  must  in  confidence  confess  it  is  not  given  to  the 
world  to  reform  public  schools — change  the  form  of 
government  of  our  prisons — lead  to  a  better  state  of 
affairs  in  our  pulpits — nor  yet  to  'show  up  spiritualism 
in  its  true  light' — but  to  show  conclusively  the  utterly 
demoralizing  effect  of  a  lawyer  in  a  Green  Field  of 
labor." 

The  reader  should  note  here  that  "An  Old  Sweet 
heart" — perhaps  the  most  popular  American  poem — 
was  the  product  of  what  seems  to  mortal  vision  un- 
poetic  conditions.  It  was  written  in  that  hour  of  deep 
darkness  just  before  the  dawn  and  started  on  its  way 
to  immortality  by  the  fitful  winds  of  uncertainty.  At 
the  narrowest  part  of  the  defile,  says  the  Persian 
proverb,  the  valley  begins  to  open. 

His  legal  ventures  ended  peremptorily  with  his 
second  attempt.  "In  the  dog-days  of  a  summer  hot  as 
the  hinges  of  Purgatory,"  said  he,  "I  tucked  my  'law 
poems'  up  my  sleeve,  turned  my  back  on  the  attorney 
business,  and  my  face  to  a  future  as  mysterious  and 
hopeless  as  a  block  of  mining  stock." 

Golden  encouragement  came  from  the  "Golden  Girl." 
She  infused  strength  in  his  resolution.  He  had  sent  her 
Bleak  House  to  read.  In  response  she  assured  him  that 
the  law  had  too  many  convolutions  for  poets.  "Have 
little  to  do  with  people  who  are  too  deep  for  you,"  she 
wrote,  in  the  guise  of  Mrs.  Bagnet.  "Be  careful  of 
interference  with  matters  you  do  not  understand — do 
nothing  in  the  dark — be  a  party  to  nothing  under 
handed  or  mysterious — and  never  put  your  foot  where 
you  can  not  see  the  ground." 

The  author  of  "Little  Brown  Hands,"  Mary  H.  Krout, 
wrote  also,  in  October,  1876,  of  his  dislike  of  the  law 


IN  THE  DARK  269 

as  a  profession.  "That  goes  to  prove,"  said  she,  "that 
you  are  a  gentleman  of  better  judgment  than  I  even 
supposed  you  to  be." 

In  that  year  of  1876,  the  Voices  called  to  him  again. 
There  seemed  at  times  a  deceptive  clamor  about  them, 
but  frequently  they  were  musical.  He  listened  to  them 
and  began  to  sing  of  them : 

"Down  in  the  night,  he  heard  them — 
The  Voices — unknown — unguessed ; 
They  whispered  and  lisped  and  murmured 
And  would  not  let  him  rest." 

"Yes,  he  heard  voices,"  said  Myron  Reed,  "and  he 
was  lonesome,  lonesome  as  Joan  of  Arc  in  the  garden. 
She  heard  voices,  but  nobody  else  heard  them.  Each 
man  has  his  private  individual  revelation  of  what  he 
ought  to  think  and  say  and  do." 

There  came  also  the  Voice  of  wisdom  from  Long 
fellow,  one  of  the  rare  providential  admonitions  of  his 
life.  One  day  he  gleaned  this  from  "Morituri  Salu- 
tamus": 

"Study  yourself ;  and  most  of  all  note  well 
Wherein  kind  nature  meant  you  to  excel" — 

sovereign  lines,  and  henceforward  the  key  to  much  that 
Riley  said  and  did.  He  saw  as  never  before  the  signifi 
cance  of  YOUTH — its  illusions,  aspirations  and  dreams. 
It  assured  him  that  all  possibilities  were  in  his  hands. 
He  was  not  to  hesitate,  but  with  ambitious  feet, 

"ASCEND   THE   LADDER   LEANING   ON   THE   CLOUD." 

Henceforth  he  thought  deeply  on  his  mission.  As  he 
wrote  in  one  of  his  "law  office  poems,"  hearts  in  pain 


270  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

should  be  glad  again  and  the  false  should  be  true  if  he 
knew  what  poets  know: 

"If  I  knew  what  poets  know, 

I  would  find  a  theme 
Sweeter  than  the  placid  flow 

Of  the  fairest  dream: 
I  would  sing  of  love  that  lives 

On  the  errors  it  forgives ; 
And  the  world  would  better  grow 

If  I  knew  what  poets  know." 

In  that  transitional  year,  he  did  not,  as  Byron  in 
a  dream,  wander  darkling  on  a  rayless,  pathless  coast. 
The  beacons  had  not  all  disappeared.  But  he  did  liter 
ally  look  up  "with  mad  disquietude  into  a  dull  sky  and 
then  lie  down  and  hide  his  eyes  and  weep."  As  is  seen 
in  lines  he  then  wrote  and  afterward  omitted  from  his 
poem,  "In  the  Dark": 

"He  moaned  with  a  passionate  yearning, 

And  a  flood  of  hopes  and  fears 
Flowed  o'er  his  troubled  spirit, 
And  ebbed  in  a  tide  of  tears. 

"The  gleam  of  a  star  through  the  window 

Fell  like  a  soothing  touch ; 
And  darkness  wore  to  the  dawning 
For  which  he  longed  so  much." 


CHAPTER  XIII 
VISION  OF  HIS   MISSION 

WALKING    one    April    morning    through    an 
orchard  with  a  friend,  his  eyes  on  the  blos 
soming  trees  and  his  thoughts  in  the  sky, 
Riley  suddenly  pitched  forward  into  a  post-hole.     In 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye  the  Tennysonian  sentiment 
came  to  his  lips: — 

"0  let  the  solid  ground 
Not  fail  beneath  my  feet 
Before  my  life  has  found 
What  some  have  found  so  sweet; 
Then  let  come  what  come  may, 
What  matter  if  I  go  mad, 
I  shall  have  had  my  day." 

The  lines,  repeated  at  random,  were  an  innocent 
prelude  to  his  "prolific  decade" — the  ten  years 
of  poetic  effusion,  whose  natal  days,  in  the 
providence  of  Heaven,  mantled  with  rapture  the 
summer  of  1876.  A  glimpse  of  that  rapture  is 
seen  in  his  remarks,  three  years  following,  to  the 
Thousandth  Man,  Myron  Reed.  One  winter  night 
they  were  talking  on  the  significance  of  dreams.  Riley 
was  in  a  state  of  ecstasy  over  a  vision  that  had  crossed 
his  path.  "Nor  was  I  on  the  road  to  Damascus,"  said 
he,  "unless  all  men  travel  that  way.  I  was  vibrating 
between  the  woods  and  the  law  office,  had  no  com 
pany  except  my  own  thoughts;  but  my  ears  were 
opened;  I  heard  a  voice — heard  it  for  several  days. 

271 


272  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Why  it  should  call,  so  unexpectedly,  to  me,  an  ob 
scure  mortal  in  a  backwoods  corner  of  the  world, 
is  beyond  my  comprehension." 

"Pleasures  and  visions,"  returned  Reed,  "are  come 
upon,  or  they  come  upon  you.  Only  one  man  has  seen 
Niagara  Falls,  and  he  was  in  search  of  something  else 
— something  prosaic,  something  that  had  work  in 
it;  and  all  of  a  sudden  he  heard  the  steady  throb 
and  pound,  and  a  little  later  saw  the  blue  and  white 
wonder." 

And  what  was  the  vision?  Just  the  plain  simple 
fact  that  he  was  to  write  poetry.  "Jay  Whit,"  the 
sign-painter,  the  Argonaut,  was  to  be  the  humble  in 
strument  for  the  transmission  of  song  to  men ;  a  voice 
he  was  to  be  for  the  "inarticulate  masses — the  soiled 
and  the  pure — the  rich  and  the  poor — the  loved  and 
the  unloved."  Whence  the  songs?  The  Argonaut 
did  not  know — 

"All  hitherward  blown 
From  the  misty  realm,  that  belongs 
To  the  vast  Unknown. 

"The  voices  pursue  him  by  day, 
And  haunt  him  by  night, 
And  he  listens,  and  needs  must  obey 
When  the  Angel  says,  'Write!'" 

His  fortunate  opportunity  had  come.  Not  in  a  mo 
ment,  like  Hugh  Wynne's,  but  in  a  fortnight  he  had 
made  a  decisive  resolution,  which,  once  made,  con 
trolled  him,  and  permitted  no  future  change  of  plan. 

"Then  straightway  before 
His  swimming  eyes,  all  vividly  was  wrought 
A  vision  that  was  with  him  evermore." 

Now  that  he  had  a  definite  object,  his  character  and 


VISION  OF  HIS  MISSION  273 

purpose  were  to  be  written  broadly  on  his  face.  No 
waste  of  time  in  platitudes;  none  of  the  inexpressive 
similarity  that  obscures  the  men  and  women  who  go 
in  public  to  see  and  be  seen.  He  was  to  be  an  in 
dividual  doing  the  work  Heaven  designed  him  to  do, 
and  in  doing  it,  he  was  to  give  expression  to  truth. 
The  vision  supplied  him  with  the  sides  of  a  ladder, 
but,  as  Dickens  had  told  him  in  the  old  Shoe-Shop, 
the  cleats  were  to  be  made  of  stuff  to  stand  wear  and 
tear,  and  the  Argonaut  was  to  make  and  nail  them  on. 
His  personal  reference  to  the  vision  was  always 
virile  and  stimulating.  "I  had  a  dream  once  years 
and  years  ago,"  he  wrote  a  friend  after  he  had  tamed 
the  lion  of  public  recognition,  "a  vision  that  I  should 
some  day  be  just  what  I  am  this  minute,  and  it  made 
me  a  different  person."  He  was  an  impatient  wind 
from  inland  regions  come  suddenly  to  the  seaside,  a 
wind  that  had  been  retarded  by  tanglewood  and 
ridges.  There  was  a  call  from  the  deep;  the  prospect 
was  divine  as  his  own  lines  attest: 

"And  the  swelling  sea  invited  me 
With  a  smiling,  beckoning  hand, 
And  I  spread  my  wings  for  a  flight  as  free 
As  ever  a  sailor  plans, 

When  his  thoughts  are  wild  and  his  heart  beguiled 
With  a  dream  of  foreign  lands." 

The  dream  was  the  more  perfect  image  of  the  dream 
he  had  when  the  musician  played — the  "fine  frenzy" 
that  entranced  him  while  under  the  sway  of  Ole  Bull's 
magic  wand. 

Writing  the  "Golden  Girl,"  he  was  pleased  to 
tell  her  that  he  had  been  busily  occupied  with 
literary  matters,  that  he  had  had  (as  we  have 
seen)  "a  perfect  hemorrhage  of  inspiration." 


274  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"Crowding  measures"  had  gushed  like  a  fountain 
from  his  heart.  He  had  produced  poems  of  better 
quality  than  ever,  and  had  sent  "samples  of  his  fancy 
work"  to  Trowbridge  and  Longfellow.  The  vision  was 
"heaven's  own  baptismal  rite."  In  the  Indianapolis 
Journal  office  in  after  years,  he  was  wont  to  call  it, 
"My  Vision  of  Summer" : 

"  'Twas  a  marvelous  vision  of  Summer—* 
That  morning  the  dawn  was  late, 
And  came  like  a  long  dream-ridden  guest 
Through  the  gold  of  the  Eastern  gate. 

"And  back  from  the  lands  enchanted, 
Where  my  earliest  mirth  was  born, 
The  thrill  of  a  laugh  was  blown  to  me 
Like  the  blare  of  an  elfin  horn." 

The  tuneful  flame  had  the  fervor  of  the  "poetic  rage" 
that  flowed  from  the  heart  of  Burns  when  the  Scottish 
Muse  came  to  the  clay  cottage  to  bind  the  holly  round 
his  brow.  It  was  the  gleam  that  Tennyson  saw  in  the 
summer-morn  of  life. 

As  Riley  said  in  "The  Shower,"  he  was  trans 
figured;  his  empty  soul  brimmed  over;  he  was 
drenched  with  the  love  of  God.  He  was  also  aware 
of  a  happiness  in  his  work  hitherto  unknown.  What 
he  did  was  interesting — "interesting,"  said  he,  "be 
cause  I  was  happy  in  my  thoughts.  The  more  inter 
esting  my  thoughts,  the  happier  I  was." 

"A  vision  may  beget  some  wonder  and  well  it  may," 
said  Ike  Walton,  "for  most  of  our  world  are  at  present 
possessed  with  an  opinion  that  visions  and  miracles 
are  ceased."  "They  have  not  ceased,"  said  Riley. 
"Again  and  again  I  have  been  guided  by  an  invisible 
Destiny.  There  has  almost  always  come  to  me  a  fore- 


THE  GRAPHIC  COMPANY.  *<"*",£ 


FACSIMILE  OF  LETTER  FROM  HEARTH  AND  HOME. 


HEADING  OF  HEARTH  AND  HOME 
Showing  the  Editor's  cottage  at  "Edgewood' 


A »  Si'..\    IN   mi:   POST  OFFICE" 
The  silhouette  figures  spell  Riley 


VISION  OF  HIS  MISSION  275 

cast  of  events  in  my  life.  I  once  told  my  brother  that 
if  I  put  several  of  my  stories  and  poems  together  and 
gave  attention  to  delivery,  I  could  succeed  on  the  plat 
form.  He  laughed  derisively  and  for  a  time  that  was 
the  end  of  that  dream.  My  old  schoolmaster,  Lee  0. 
Harris,  used  to  send  poems  to  the  Indianapolis  Sentinel 
and  get  beautiful  notices.  I  wondered  whether  the  day 
would  come  when  I  should  contribute  to  the  Journal 
and  read  praise  of  my  work.  I  like  to  believe  as  the 
pious  men  of  old  that  every  man  has  a  particular 
guardian  angel — his  Daemon — to  attend  him  in  all  his 
dangers,  both  of  body  and  soul.  There  have  been  crises 
in  my  life  when  I  was  awed  by  what  I  saw.  Like 
Job — a  spirit  passed  before  my  face ;  my  hair  stood  up ; 
fear  and  trembling  came  upon  me,  and  made  all  my 
bones  to  shake." 

The  Argonaut  had  dreams  while  drifting  about  with 
the  "Graphics" — not  a  vision,  however;  not  the  clear, 
decisive  disclosure  of  what  he  was  to  do. 

He  had  a  dream  when  he  received  a  talisman  (as  he 
thought)  in  the  letter  from  Hearth  and  Home — his 
first  check  for  a  poem.  An  air-castle  it  was  with  tissue 
of  riches.  He  saw  himself  an  Aladdin  with  the  magic 
ring  on  his  finger,  in  a  garden,  among  trees  with  fruits 
of  many  colors,  their  foliage  beautifully  blended  with 
emeralds,  pearls  and  rubies.  In  fancy  he  filled  his 
pockets  with  diamonds  from  the  trees  and  afterward, 
by  scattering  them  right  and  left  in  handfuls,  gained 
the  affections  of  the  people  as  the  young  Aladdin  had 
done.  It  was  dawn,  midday  and  moonlight — all  in  one : 

"A  thousand  fairy  throngs 
Flung  at  him,  from  their  flashing  hands, 
The  echoes  of  their  songs." 

Throughout  his  "misty  years"  his  mind  was  a  nur- 


276  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

sery  for  "thick-coming  fancies."  He  pleased  his  whim 
sical  tendency  with  one  from  the  "British  Book."  The 
gay  John  Flaxman,  fond  of  merry  legends,  had  invented 
for  the  amusement  of  his  family  the  story  of  the  Chi 
nese  Casket,  giving  its  genealogy,  locating  the  original 
in  the  bowers  of  Paradise  and  afterward  a  reproduc 
tion  of  it,  made  of  scented  wood  and  precious  gems,  in 
China.  There  it  was  protected  in  a  sanctuary  by  a 
princess,  who,  understanding  the  language  of  the  birds, 
had  been  taught  to  prize  it  by  what  she  heard  in  the 
song  of  the  nightingale.  The  Casket  was  to  contain  the 
verse  and  maxims  of  poets  and  philosophers.  There 
coming  a  day  when  the  treasure  was  unsafe  in  China, 
being  exposed  to  the  malice  of  magicians,  the  princess 
carried  it  to  Mount  Hermon  and  deposited  it  on  "a 
high  and  holy  hill."  There  Sadi  wrote  for  the  Casket 
while  a  guardian  angel  watched  over  it.  The  poet  died 
and  Hafiz  wrote,  but  when  loose  visions  floated  before 
his  sight  and  his  strains  lost  their  purity  and  virtue, 
indignant  angels  snatched  the  Casket  away,  resolved  to 
bear  it  to  a  distant  isle,  where  virtuous  works  of  art 
and  virtuous  people  abound.  The  angelic  keepers 
floated  with  their  treasure  over  inland  vales  toward  the 
Golden  West.  The  Muses  saluted  the  flying  pageant 
as  it  passed,  the  Colossus  of  Rhodes  bowed  his  head  and 
the  gods  of  Greece  clapped  their  hands.  The  fleets  of 
nations  waved  their  pennants  in  approval  and  in  due 
season 

"The  godlike  genius  of  the  British  Isle 
Received  the  Casket  with  benignant  smile." 

Flaxman's  story  ended  with  Britain  but  Riley  and 
an  early  booklover  of  his  native  town,  whose  fancy  was 
capricious  like  his  own,  carried  the  Casket  across  the 


VISION  OF  HIS  MISSION  277 

Atlantic.  Longfellow  had  written  his  sweetest  verse 
for  it  and  both  thanked  Heaven  the  poet  had  kept  it 
free  from  the  taint  of  corruption  and  vice.  "My  boy," 
said  his  friend  half -seriously,  "the  day  will  come  when 
you  will  write  songs  for  the  Casket."  The  friend  (an 
intuitive  young  woman)  was  not  certain  that  he  would 
succeed  Longfellow  but  certain  she  was  he  would  do 
what  he  could,  and  that  what  he  did  would  be  musical. 
"It  was  the  thought  of  an  idle  moment,"  said  Riley,  "a 
joke  taken  seriously" — seriously,  just  as  one  other  time 
he  was  capering  along  the  street  with  some  friends, 
talking  about  a  wondrous  casket  he  had  found  and  his 
purpose  to  fill  it  with  verse — the  friends  thinking  him 
in  earnest  when  he  was  "only  joking." 

It  may  be  true  that  "God  hides  the  germs  of  every 
living  thing,  that  no  record  holds  the  moment  by  the 
clock,  of  any  discovery";  but  surely,  if  mortal  ever 
knew  he  was  born  again,  ever  knew  he  was  face  to  face 
with  a  turning-point  in  his  career,  Whitcomb  Riley 
knew  it  the  summer  of  1876.  A  period  in  his  life  had 
come  when  he  lived  years  in  a  few  weeks.  Henceforth 
his  faith  seldom  failed.  Misgivings  became  less  nu 
merous.  The  vision  was 

"The  fountain  light  of  all  his  day, 
The  master  light  of  all  his  seeing." 

"I  had  come  through  life,"  he  said,  "just  dallying  in 
the  shallow  eddies  of  a  brook;  now  I  was  a  river.  I 
yearned  to  float  and  flow  out  God-ward.  Life  was  rich 
er  than  ever  I  dreamed  it  could  be  when  I  was  a  trust 
ful  child  peering  out  across  the  future.  There  is  no 
rapture  like  the  joy  of  finding  your  place  and  the  assur 
ance  that  you  have  found  it.  It  is  to  be  transported 
from  midnight  to  the  rosy  light  of  morning." 


278  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"A  great  ripe  radiance  grew  at  last 
And  burst  like  a  bubble  of  gold, 
Gilding  the  way  that  the  feet  danced  on — 
And  that  was  the  dawn — the  Dawn!" 

That  Riley  concealed  the  particulars  of  his  vision 
from  his  friends  has  since  been  thought  rather  too 
diplomatic  for  one  who  usually  did  things  in  the  open. 
Whisper  it  to  no  one,  said  the  prudent  Longfellow — 
keep  your  plans  a  secret  in  your  own  bosom — the  mo 
ment  you  uncork  them  the  flavor  escapes.  Riley  pro 
ceeded  to  act  accordingly,  not  only  with  reference  to 
the  vision  but  in  other  ways.  His  brother,  as  we  have 
seen,  ridiculed  an  early  dream  and  others  had  treated 
his  forecasts  of  a  career  for  himself  with  similar  in 
difference.  Such  had  been  his  humiliation  that  he  re 
solved  to  go  alone.  "I  did  not  go  round  sounding  a 
timbrel  in  the  people's  ears,"  he  said,  "but  clung  to  my 
purpose  and  kept  my  own  counsel" — and  doubtless  he 
did.  Myron  Reed  seems  to  have  been  the  first  friend  to 
know  of  the  vision  as  a  revelation.  And,  characteristic 
ally,  he  gave  the  Argonaut  another  bit  of  wisdom  for 
his  log-book.  "The  Cunard  Line,"  said  Reed,  "has  never 
lost  a  passenger.  That  is  not  a  matter  of  good  luck; 
that  is  a  matter  of  good  oak,  and  good  iron,  and  good 
seamanship."  Fortunately  the  Argonaut  was  provided 
with  a  shield  and  boom  both  made  of  iron — an  "iron 
mask"  and  an  iron  will.  The  former  kept  him  from  the 
intrusions  of  strangers  and  friends.  With  the  latter 
he  stuck  to  his  purpose  through  all  kinds  of  weather, 
with  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  Through  all  the 
vicissitudes  of  his  literary  fortune,  his  will,  like  a  Rich 
ard  Doubledick,  was  his  unsleeping  companion — "firm 
as  a  rock,  and  true  as  the  sun."  It  was  not  a  blustering 
will ;  rather  was  it  like  the  steady  tug  of  gravitation. 


VISION  OF  HIS  MISSION  279 

With  that  and  a  little  motto  from  Bleak  House — 
"Trust  in  Providence  and  Your  Own  Efforts" — he 
went  forth  to  transmute  the  white  moments  of  exist 
ence  into  music  for  the  sons  and  daughters  of  men. 

He  needed  the  iron  will  from  the  beginning.  His 
friends  tempted  him  with  "that  object  of  universal  de 
votion,  the  almighty  dollar."  Counselors  came  to  per 
suade  him  that  fame  (as  they  thought  of  his  future) 
was  "the  satellite  of  fashion,"  that  the  applause  of  the 
crowd  was  worth  more  than  the  silent  devotion  to  an 
ideal,  and  his  father  discouraged  his  venture  in  the 
new  field: 

"My  son!  the  quiet  road 

Which  men  frequent,  where  peace  and  blessings  travel, 
Follows  the  river's  course,  the  valley's  bending." 

A  rover,  with  whom  Riley  had  once  toured  a  few 
Indiana  towns,  was  "not  making  a  dollar  with 
his  present  show  in  Pittsburg."  He  was  "waiting  for 
something  to  turn  up.  We  are  going  to  take  a  'Rip 
Van  Winkle  Company'  out  in  three  weeks.  We  will  do 
the  small  towns.  You  can  have  any  part  you  want 
except  Rip.  Rip  is  the  best  drawing  bill  in  America." 

The  "Golden  Girl,"  a  talented  musician,  who  also 
had  dreams  of  the  stage,  sought  him  for  a  role  in 
"The  Star  of  Mystery  Company,"  or  rather  the  frag 
ments  of  the  company.  There  was  to  be  Mirth — 
Music  —  Magic  —  and  Mystery.  "Should  I,"  she 
wrote,  "secure  a  position  for  you  with  good  salary, 
will  you  go?  That  is  my  hope  of  seeing  you.  Won't 
we  have  FUN?  You  will  carry  my  grip  and  go  to 
breakfast  with  me  and  take  me  to  the  opera  house. 
Yes,  and  waltz  with  me  behind  the  scenes  while  the 
orchestra  plays  'The  Blue  Danube,'  and  people  go 


280  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

wild  with  expectation  waiting  for  the  'show  to  begin/ 
and  little  boys  grow  impatient  and  pummel  each 
other  on  the  front  seats.  And  we  will  go  down  the 
street  the  next  day  and  see  the  people.  You  will  get 
mad  at  everybody  I  don't  like  and  I'll  like  everybody 
you  do.  Life  will  be  enchantment." 

Nor  did  the  proffers  of  advice  cease  with  Riley's 
choice  of  the  literary  field.  He  was  annoyed  with 
"overtures  from  foreign  lands,"  as  he  phrased  his 
temptations,  till  the  publication  of  his  first  book.  "The 
lecture  field  is  the  place  for  you — and  don't  you  for* 
get  it,"  wrote  a  literary  aspirant  three  years  after  his 
vision.  "Writing  is  a  starvation  process.  A  fellow 
is  likely  to  die  of  inanition.  As  a  friend  of  mine  says, 
'Fate  overtakes  him  so  dern  sudden' ;  and  it  makes  no 
difference  how  good  the  writing  may  be.  A  writer 
must  run  the  gauntlet  that  looks  to  the  beginner  like 
the  track  of  the  Union  Pacific  railway  stretching  in 
a  straight  line  clear  across  the  western  edge  of  space, 
and  all  the  way  up  hill." 

The  Argonaut  was  unshaken.  None  of  these  things 
moved  him,  nor  others  of  like  nature  though  ever  so 
numerous  and  persistent.  He  gave  heart  and  soul  to 
his  poems,  thinking  about  them  and  writing  them  while 
painting  signs  for  his  daily  bread. 

There  was  singleness  of  purpose  in  the  vision.  It 
did  not  trouble  Riley  with  thoughts  of  being  a  great 
man.  Launcelot  said  it  not  more  humbly  than  he : 

"In  me  there  dwells 

No  greatness,  save  it  be  some  far-off  touch 
Of  greatness  to  know  well  I  am  not  great." 

Seldom  if  ever  was  a  young  man  of  genius  more 
ignorant  of  his  powers.  He  was  not  certain  that  he 


VISION  OF  HIS  MISSION  281 

possessed  genius.  That  "gift  of  God"  might  be  his; 
time  would  tell.  For  many  years  he  had  doubts  of 
the  value  of  what  he  wrote  and  its  reception  by  the 
world,  but  never  after  the  vision  had  he  a  shadow 
of  doubt  that  he  was  commissioned  to  sing. 

Kiley  had  a  vision  of  his  mission,  but  not  a  vision 
of  the  obstacles.  Whatever  situation  in  life  you  ever 
wish  or  propose  for  yourself,  said  the  old  poet  Shen- 
stone,  acquire  a  clear  and  lucid  idea  of  the  inconveni 
ences  attending  it.  Riley  acquired  no  such  lucid  idea 
but  plunged  at  once  into  a  sea  of  troubles — or  rather 
some  invisible  something  forced  him  into  it.  He  did 
not  count  the  cost.  After  he  had  been  buffeted  on 
the  sea,  and  his  work  was  practically  done,  he  saw 
that  the  vision  had  shown  but  one  side  of  the  picture. 
It  was  significant,  he  thought,  that  the  Golden  Fleece 
— his  fanciful  name  for  poetry — had  been  nailed  to  a 
tree  in  the  grove  of  the  war-god.  The  lesson  was  this, 
that  poetry  is  an  inaccessible  thing.  "The  people  think 
the  way  of  the  singer  is  the  way  of  peace,"  he  remarked 
after  he  had  practically  fulfilled  his  mission.  "They 
are  mistaken.  From  first  to  last  the  poet  has  to  war 
against  discouragement,  nightmares,  blockades,  and 
other  perverse  conditions."  It  was  another  way  of  his 
saying  that  the  poet  is  a  Pilgrim. 

"The  peculiar  thing  about  us,"  wrote  his  friend  Reed, 
"is  our  disobedience.  We  see  the  light  and  hear  the 
voice  but  heed  it  not.  We  are  woefully  afraid  of  being 
alone  with  God  and  the  vision  of  our  province."  The 
advice  was  timely.  Riley  had  written  on  the  tablet 
of  his  being — obedience  to  the  light,  but  like  all  aspir 
ing  men,  his  pure  mind  was  refreshed  when  stirred 
up  by  way  of  remembrance.  Thus  was  he  launched  on 
a  literary  career,  looking  ever  upward  and  always 


282  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

with  a  true  sense  of  the  dignity  of  his  mission,  though 
at  intervals  he  "played  with  jingle"  for  relaxation 
and  amusement.  True  he  was  to  have  little  rest 
and  less  peace;  but  he  was  to  "enjoy  the  fiery  con 
sciousness  of  his  own  activity."  The  vision  was  an 
abiding  comfort.  He  was  twenty-six  years  old.  What 
a  day  of  rapture  had  been  his  had  he  been  permitted 
to  part  the  veil  of  the  future,  and  see  on  the  further 
shore  of  his  career,  one  of  his  beautiful  books,  and 
read  from  the  author  of  Pike  County  Ballads,  per 
haps  the  most  cordial  letter  he  ever  received — "the 
finest  letter  ever  penned,"  was  Riley's  word.  Long 
fellow  wrote  him  the  year  of  the  vision  that  he  had 
"the  true  poetic  faculty  and  insight."  Then  was  the 
daum — he  was  beginning  to  do  the  thing.  When  Hay 
wrote  him,  twenty-six  years  later,  he  had  done  it: 

Washington,  D.  C.,  Nov.  12,  1902. 
Dear  Mr.  Riley — 

I  thank  you  most  cordially  for  thinking  of  me  and 
sending  me  your  "Book  of  Joyous  Children."  I  was 
alone  last  night — my  joyous  little  people  have  grown 
up  and  left  me.  My  fine  boy  is  dead — my  two  girls 
are  married,  my  young  son  is  away  at  school — and  so 
I  read,  in  solitary  enjoyment,  these  delightful  lyrics, 
so  full  of  feeling  and  easy  natural  music.  It  is  a 
great  gift  you  have,  and  you  have  not  been  disobedi 
ent  to  the  heavenly  vision.  Long  may  you  live  to 
enjoy  it,  and  share  it  in  your  generous  way  with  others. 

Yours  faithfully, 

JOHN  HAY. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  GOLDEN  GIRL 

WHITCOMB  RILEY  dreamed  of  love  and  mar 
riage.    Not  to  admit  this  would  be  equivalent 
to  denying  the  qualities  of  the  true  poet.    In 
adequately,  and  sometimes  half -seriously,  he  expressed 
his  dream  in  verse: — 

"And  oh  my  heart — lie  down!    Keep  still! 
If  ever  we  meet,  as  I  pray  we  will; 
All  ideal  things  will  become  fixed  facts — 
The  stars  won't  wane  and  the  moon  won't  wax; 
And  my  soul  will  sing  in  a  ceaseless  glee, 
When  I  find  the  woman  that  rhymes  with  me." 

That  he  never  found  his  mate,  that  he  failed  to 
find  the  nuptial  rhyme,  is  now  the  "fixed  fact."  That 
he  strove  ardently  in  his  early  manhood  to  find  her  is 
also  a  fact,  although  in  his  bachelor  days  he  was  wary 
of  talk  about  it  and  sometimes  slow  to  admit  it.  It 
was  his  fortune  to  meet  many  interesting  women, 
some  of  them  gifted,  some  divinely  fair,  but  it  was 
not  his  fortune  to  meet  "the  right  woman."  And  if  it 
be  true,  as  a  certain  philosopher  has  said,  that  the 
best  works  proceed  from  unmarried  or  childless  men, 
perhaps  it  was  Destiny's  design  he  should  not  meet  her. 
When  collecting  poems  for  his  first  book — then  a  man 
of  three-and-thirty  years — he  reached  the  conclusion 
that  celibacy  was  to  be  his  lot  and  ever  afterward 
stoutly  affirmed  that  his  fate  was  inexorably  decreed, 
sometimes  woefully  signing  himself,  "Yours,  Fate  & 

283 


284  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Co."  It  was  tragic,  but  he  realized  that,  should  he 
find  the  "right  woman,"  she  would  fail  to  find  in  him 
the  "right  man."  He  "put  a  washer  on  his  affections," 
as  he  phrased  it,  and  lodged  in  his  bosom  an  old  saying 
from  Thales,  the  answer  to  the  question  when  genius 
should  marry:  A  young  genius,  not  yet;  an  elder 
genius,  not  at  all. 

"I  know  of  nothing,"  said  John  Fitch,  the 
inventor,  "so  perplexing  and  vexatious  to  a  man 
of  feelings  as  a  turbulent  wife  and  steamboat 
building.  For  one  man  to  be  teased  with  both 
is  to  be  looked  upon  as  the  most  unfortunate  man 
in  the  world."  Riley  was  aware  that  the  vexation  is 
the  same  in  poem  building,  but  he  was  not  so  ungallant 
as  to  lay  all  the  blame  for  domestic  infelicity  at  the 
door  of  the  wife.  As  he  saw  it,  Fitch  was  at  fault  for 
going  into  partnership  with  a  woman  that  did  not 
rhyme  with  him. 

"The  highest  compliment  I  can  pay  to  a  woman," 
said  Riley,  at  the  age  of  fifty, — answering  a  wise  and 
beautiful  married  woman  who  was  curious  to  know 
why  he  had  not  married — "the  highest  compliment  I 
can  pay  to  a  woman  is  not  to  marry  her."  He  pain 
fully  realized  then,  as  he  did  not  when  a  lover,  that 
he  was,  by  temperament,  at  least,  disqualified  for  the 
obligations  of  matrimony. 

After  he  had  settled  down  to  hard  literary  work  in 
Indianapolis,  he  wrote  in  a  letter  to  a  woman  writer: 
"The  season  has  been  one  long  carnival  of  enjoyment. 
The  city  has  been  thronged  with  peerless  maidens  from 
all  quarters  of  the  globe,  and  even  as  I  write,  a  semi 
circle  of  them  lies  at  my  feet  'like  a  rainbow  fallen  on 
the  grass/  all  wanting  me  to  fly  with  them  and  be  their 
own.  But  I  am  an  ambitious  sort  of  prince  and  shall 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  285 

not  fly,  having  registered  a  vow  to  wed  only  an  angel 
without  fleck  or  flaw  of  earthly  imperfection  and  with 
a  pair  of  snowy  wings  'leven  feet  from  tip  to  tip." 

If  peradventure  his  thought  wandered  to  marriage, 
it  was  never  with  the  serious  consideration  of  former 
years.  Like  the  sailor  in  "Tales  of  the  Ocean,"  who  in 
fancy  was  transported  to  the  side  of  his  Nancy  Flan 
ders,  he  was  suddenly  disturbed  in  his  dream  of 
"bridal  raptures"  by  the  gruff  call  of  the  captain :  "All 
hands  ahoy !" — and  as  the  sailor  took  to  his  ropes,  so 
the  poet  took  to  his  pencil. 

It  should  be  borne  in  mind  that  a  poet  is  human — 
so  human  that  he  is  likely  to  have  many  sweethearts. 
Like  those  of  other  men,  his  love  affairs  may  be  the 
subject  of  humorous  or  serious  comment.  Specula 
tions  about  them  may  even  be  beneficial.  His  tender 
passions,  his  attachments  and  endearments  may  seem 
sacred,  but  they  should  not  be  wholly  outside  the  pale 
of  public  consideration,  since  they  belong  to  the  world 
of  joys  and  sorrows.  Wherever  literature  has  lived, 
woman  has  so  impressed  her  beauty  and  character  on 
the  heart  of  the  poet  that  all  aspects  of  nature — the 
stars  and  the  clouds,  the  hills  and  the  trees  and  the 
motions  of  the  sea — have  been  to  him  as  mirrors  and 
heralds  of  her  luster  and  love.  It  seems  superfluous  to 
add  that  she  sustains  a  vital  relation  to  the  production 
of  verse. 

In  that  period  of  visions  and  dreams,  those  intricate 
years  of  the  seventies,  a  new  love  was  a  great  event  for 
the  Argonaut; 

"The  world  was  divided  into  two  parts — 
Where  his  sweetheart  was,  and  where  she  was  not." 

He  would  experience  a  few  hours  or  weeks — seldom 


286  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

longer — in  dreaming  the  happy  hours  away,  and  then 
the  Fates  would  afflict  him  with  the  woe  of  hapless  love. 
Often  a  rival  would  appear.  "Our  young  friend, 
J.  W.  Riley,"  said  a  county  paper  local,  "has  a  poem 
on  The  Lost  Kiss.'  That  kiss  was  lost  over  in  Sugar 
Creek  township,  and  we  know  the  young  man  who 
found  it."  Often  an  impassable  gulf  appeared 
between  him  and  his  sweetheart  which  she  could  no 
more  cross  than  he.  After  several  ineffectual  efforts 
to  restore  communication  he  would  face  the  other  way 
and,  as  he  said,  "wander  down  the  corridors  of  inclem 
ency  lonesome  as  a  pale  daylight  moon — 

Ah !  lone  as  a  bard  may  be ! 
In  search  of  the  woman  that  rhymes  with  me. 

"In  search  of  what?  Of  any  hand  that  is  no  more, 
of  any  hand  that  never  was,  of  any  touch  that  might 
have  magically  changed  his  life."  There  is  nothing  so 
embarrassing  as  to  be  a  lover, — "nothing  so  harass 
ing/'  said  he.  "A  terrible  thing  it  is,  if  the  girl  is  not 
in  love  with  you.  She  will  make  a  football  of  your 
heart  and  torment  you  with  anguish  from  Dan  to  Beer- 
sheba."  Man,  he  perceived,  had  weighed  the  sun;  he 
had  determined  the  path  of  the  stars,  and  the  moment 
of  an  eclipse  to  the  fraction  of  a  second,  but  he  had  not 
solved  the  mystery  of  love; 

"Its  passions  will  rock  thee 
As  the  storms  rock  the  ravens  on  high." 

"I  tell  you,"  Riley  exclaimed,  "there  is  something 
tragically  wrong  with  the  married  state!  Rip  Van 
Winkle's  fate  is  not  fiction.  Little  wonder  he  was 
driven  to  drink — and  the  Catskill  woods:  I  love  de 
trees — dey  keep  me  from  de  wind  and  rain— and  dey 
never  blows  me  up." 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  287 

Writing  to  a  county  paper  of  a  compositor,  a  printer 
friend  who  had  married  a  Greenfield  girl,  Riley  was 
outwardly  facetious,  but  beneath  the  surface  quite  seri 
ous  about  it.  "We  know  little  of  the  bride,"  he  wrote, 
"other  than  that  she  is  fair  and  womanly  beyond  all 
words ;  but  as  for  the  compositor — we  know  him  and 
recall  with  emotions  of  awe  the  way  he  used  to  tangle 
up  our  silken  sentences  and  crush  and  mangle  beyond 
all  hope  of  recognition  the  many  prattling  puns  we  in 
trusted  to  his  care.  The  manifold  inflictions  he  heaped 
upon  us  then  we  bore  in  mute  despair;  now  we  exult, 
for  he  is  wedded  to  another,  and  our  'schooner'  of  de 
light  f oameth  over — • 

My  dear  young  friend,  regaled  with  love, 

With  all  your  heart  ablaze, 

Don't  think  yourself  a  lucky  dog 

For  all  your  married  ways ; 

But  learn  to  wear  a  sober  face — ? 

Be  hopeful  as  you  can — 

'Tis  really  quite  a  serious  thing 

To  be  a  married  man." 

There  was  one  sweetheart,  the  "Golden  Girl,"  who 
— since  at  least  a  dozen  poems  cluster  round  her — 
merits  more  than  casual  mention.  The  young  woman 
who  could  prompt  her  lover  to  write  such  a  masterpiece 
as  "Fame"  is  not  to  be  passed  lightly  by.  "Her  history," 
to  phrase  it  in  Riley's  words,  "was  as  strangely  sweet 
and  sad  as  any  you  can  find  in  the  pages  of  romance. 
Her  letters  evinced  a  mind  far  above  the  common.  She 
was  a  womanly  woman.  I  recall  her  unaffectedness 
and  simplicity  with  the  tenderest  emotions." 

She  was  "a  dreamer  of  dreams,"  another  Mary 
Chitwood,  giving  expression  to  her  aspiring  genius 
in  prose,  however,  instead  of  verse,  living  in 


288  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

the  woods  as  "the  little  singer  of  Franklin 
County"  once  lived  in  seclusion  in  Indiana.  She  was 
frail — the  roses  in  her  cheeks  were  omens  of  a  fatal 
malady.  She  was  "one  of  the  beads,"  she  wrote,  "in 
that  starry  circle,  that  flaming  necklace  of  some  kind 
strung  together  somewhere  in  great  black  space."  She 
was  "a  soul  sea-blown,  that  knew  not  of  any  harbor, 
one  of  those  unanchored  ships,"  she  wrote  again  when 
trying  her  fortune  in  another  state,  "that 

'Sail  to  and  fro,  and  then  go  down 

In  unknown  seas  that  none  shall  know, 

Without  one  ripple  of  renown.' ' 

With  her,  into  the  unknown,  went  her  lover's  letters, 
which — to  judge  from  the  fragments  left — doubtless 
contained  some  of  the  loveliest  prose  he  ever  wrote. 
Honey,  they  were,  "dripping  from  the  comb,"  she 
said,  "freighted  with  hope  and  the  brightest  bless 
ings  ever  dropped  carelessly  out  of  Angel  fingers  upon 
this  earth ;  they  are  the  sparkling  gems  that  adorn  and 
diadem  my  life  with  happiness." 

Riley's  dream  of  the  "Golden  Girl,"  could  it  be  de 
picted  in  words,  would  read  like  some  legend  of  the 
tender  passion  in  a  Forest  of  Love.  He  was  another 
Orlando,  hanging  verses  on  the  trees  for  his  Rosalind, 
although  her  temple  of  the  wood  was  some  five  hundred 
miles  away.  The  trees  were  books  and  she  was  to  read 
them.  And  as  usual  there  were  not  wanting  Touch 
stones  to  mock  his  effusions,  to  say  that  poets  are 
capricious,  that  lovers  are  given  to  poetry,  and  so  on. 
The  first  word  about  her  came  from  the  lovable  Graphic 
Chum,  James  McClanahan.  Although  he  and  Riley  had 
dissolved  partnership  in  sign-painting,  they  had  not  dis 
solved  their  friendship.  When  on  the  road,  McClana- 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  289 

han  continued  to  write  of  new  discoveries.  "I  have 
found  a  golden  girl,"  he  said,  on  one  of  his  return  trips 
to  Indiana,  "and  I  have  brought  you  her  beautiful 
hand"  (taking  a  tin-type  picture  of  her  hand  from  his 
pocket) .  "She  loves  art  and  poetry ;  she  writes  stories ; 
and  if  she  writes  you  I  want  you  to  answer  with  your 
best.  She  deserves  literary  friends."  He  went  on  to  tell 
of  her  other  gifts,  how  she  could  play  the  piano,  guitar, 
harp  and  violin.  He  talked  about  her  beauty — and  her 
suitors,  but  did  not  tell  that  he  was  one  of  them. 

McClanahan  had  first  met  her  at  Black  River  Falls, 
Wisconsin,  just  before  her  decision  to  seek  health  in  the 
pine  region.  One  day  after  acquaintance  had  ripened 
into  friendship,  when  genius  was  the  subject  of  their 
talk,  he  said,  "I  want  you  to  know  a  friend  of  mine  in 
Greenfield,  Indiana,  Whitcomb  Riley.  He  is  a  coming 
man  in  the  literary  field.  I  love  him  better  to-day  than 
any  one  in  the  world  except  my  mother.  He  is  my 
ideal :  he  is  the  whitest  man  on  earth."  He  then  read 
to  her  several  Riley  poems.  Such  praise  did  not  fall 
lightly  on  the  heart  of  the  "Golden  Girl." 

"How  is  it  you  woo?"  asks  Riley  in  a  poem:  , 

"How  is  it  you  woo  and  you  win? 
Why,  to  answer  you  true — the  first  thing  that  you  do 
Is  to  simply,  my  dearest — begin." 

So  they  began,  and  one  result,  to  say  nothing  of  love, 
was  a  correspondence  that  was  as  thought-sparkling  as 
it  was  tender  and  beautiful.  The  "Golden  Girl"  was 
alone  with  her  mother,  young  sister,  and  stepfather  in 
the  Black  River  pinery.  Though  ill,  she  was  ambitious. 
She  had  written  a  story  when  sixteen,  and  the  literary 
impulse  was  strong  in  her.  Riley  thought  of  her  as  a 
lonely  wild-flower  singing  and  sorrowing  with  wood- 


290  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

warblers  among  the  giant  trees.  He  sent  her  a  waif 
of  his  Grub  Street  days,  "A  Poet's  Wooing,"  to  find  out 
whether  she  was  "sharper  than  an  eastern  wind,"  and 
whether  he  was  to  march  from  her  or  march  to  her. 
His  chief  desire  was  to  cheer  her  in  her  loneliness. 
Other  letters  were  written  to  that  end. 

"What  can  I  do  to  make  you  glad— * 
As  glad  as  glad  can  be, 
Till  your  clear  eyes  seem 
Like  the  rays  that  gleam 
And  glint  through  a  dew-decked  tree?" 

One  letter  was  "filled  with  the  most  cheerful  ideas 
he  could  express."  He  drew  grotesque  pictures  with 
silly  dialogues  beneath,  representing  experiences  on  the 
road  with  the  Graphic  Company  and  "Standard  Reme 
dies."  He  said  "funny  things  till  tears  of  laughter  rose 
to  her  eyelids."  She  was  "prostrated  with  the  sense 
of  hilarity."  When  several  letters  had  passed,  he  fell 
in  love — in  love  with  an  ideal ;  a  creature  of  his  imagi 
nation  ;  "an  echo  of  his  heart" : 

"And,  like  a  lily  on  the  river  floating, 
She  shone  upon  the  river  of  his  thoughts." 

Truly,  as  Riley  saw  her  in  his  dream,  the  "Golden 
Girl"  was — as  Longfellow  has  it — "the  creature  of  his 
imagination."  The  woman  did  not  live  who  could  meet 
the  requirements  of  that  dream.  Often  he  saw  her 
floating  in  her  birch  bark  canoe  on  Black  River.  The 
thought  of  her  quickened  his  numbers.  "It  is  as  easy  to 
write  verse,"  he  wrote,  "as  for  the  ripples  of  the  river 
to  prattle."  He  longed  to  see  the  light  of  her  smile, 

"To  peer  in  her  eyes  as  a  diver  might 
Peer  in  the  sea  ere  he  leaps  outright — 
Catch  his  breath,  with  a  glance  above, 
And  drop  full-length  in  the  depths  of  love." 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  291 

It  was  a  versatile  correspondence,  in  which  their 
hopes  and  fears,  their  perceptions,  fancies  and 
witticisms  ranged  from  visions  of  fortune  and 
fame  down  to  their  weight  and  age.  (She,  light  as  a 
leaf,  "possessed  the  proud  dignity  of  ninety  pounds"; 
he,  one  hundred  and  ten ;  she  was  twenty  years  old ;  he, 
twenty-six.)  As  interest  in  her  deepened,  Riley  flat 
tered  himself  that  he  had  found  "that  golden  fleece,  a 
woman's  love."  And  he  had,  but  Destiny  denied  him 
the  joy  of  taking  it  to  his  own  cottage — not  the  dream 
of  it,  however,  which  he  afterward  included  in  "Ike 
.Walton's  Prayer"— 

"Let  but  a  little  hut  be  mine 
Where  at  the  hearthstone  I  may  hear 
The  cricket  sing 
And  have  the  shine 
Of  one  glad  woman's  eyes  to  make 

For  my  poor  sake, 
Our  simple  home  a  place  divine ; — 
Just  the  wee  cot~-the  cricket's  chirr — i 
Love,  and  the  smiling  face  of  her." 

"Dame  Durden"  and  "My  Little  Woman,"  he  called 
her,  while  she  smiled  at  his  pleasantry  and  returned 
with  "My  King  Harold"  and  "My  Little  Man,"  lovingly 
twitting  him  on  the  poverty  of  his  "Graphic"  days: 

"Blessings  on  thee,  Little  Man, — • 
Barefoot  Bard  with  cheek  of  tan, 
Run  to  Love  and  Nature's  store, 
And  go  barefoot  nevermore." 

The  clever  "Little  Woman"  had  definite  opinions  on 
good  blood  and  the  importance  of  worthy  ancestors. 
She  was  "proud  of  the  rich  old  southern  blood  in  her 
veins — proud  that  she  could  trace  her  forefathers  back 
hundreds  of  years  and  find  honor,  riches  and  fame." 


292  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

She  had  the  artistic  temperament.  '"We  are  kindred 
spirits,"  she  wrote, — "said  kinship  exposed  and  ex 
plained  or  money  refunded."  She  swept  cobwebs  from 
the  "Little  Man's"  mind: 

"Little  old  woman,  and  whither  so  high? — i 
To  sweep  the  cobwebs  out  of  the  sky." 

She  signally  influenced  Riley  in  his  decision  to  quit 
the  law.  The  law  office  was  the  "Growlery."  She 
charged  him  "to  abandon  it  and  nail  up  the  door."  It 
was  tragic  for  genius  such  as  he  possessed  "to  be  lost 
in  the  mountains  of  Wiglomeration."  In  February, 
1876,  soon  after  he  had  entered  his  father's  office  the 
second  time,  she  contributed  a  little  sarcasm  with  her 
love.  "And  you  are  going  to  be  a  lawyer,"  she  wrote, 
"and  a  famous  one,  too,  I'll  be  bound ! — Why,  how  con 
venient.  When  I  want  a  divorce  you  will  be  my  coun 
sel,  tell  all  kinds  of  stories  about  my  husband's  vil 
lainy,  pound  your  fist  on  a  big  book,  and  rumple  up  your 
hair  until  the  jury  quails  before  the  breeze  of  eloquence 
which  fairly  takes  them  off  their  feet." 

Riley  was  in  happy  valley  when  he  could  give  the 
"Golden  Girl"  charming  names.  Reflecting  on  "the 
many  hearts  she  had  touched  and  awakened  and  the  ad 
miration  and  love  she  had  won,"  he  thought  of  her  as 
the  lovely  Esther  Summerson  of  Bleak  House.  "I  have 
a  new  name  for  you,"  he  wrote,  "Dame  Burden,  and  I 
want  you  for  my  sake  as  well  as  your  own  to  read  the 
book."  One  passage  in  it  expressed  his  sentiment  as 
to  what  a  woman  should  be :  "When  a  young  lady  is 
as  mild  as  she  is  game,  and  is  game  as  she  is  mil'd,  that 
is  all  I  ask,  and  more  than  I  expect.  Then  she  becomes 
a  Queen,  and  that  is  about  what  you  are." 

In  the  spring  of  1876  Riley  had  suffered  from  her 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  293 

long  silence.  One  might  explain  her  silence  by  citing 
her  love  for  McClanahan,  provided  Riley  did  not  know 
of  her  love.  But  he  did  know  of  it  although  he  was 
not  aware  that  she  loved  his  friend  deeply.  She  was 
still  writing  Riley  in  the  spirit  of  a  literary  correspond 
ence,  and  did  not  then  know  what  she  sorrowfully  real 
ized  a  few  weeks  later,  that  the  Graphic  Chum  was  a 
capricious  young  man,  blown  hither  and  thither  by  baf 
fling  winds.  Since  1872  he  and  Riley  had  been  cruising 
on  a  choppy  sea.  The  caprice  in  each  had  been  about 
equally  distributed.  Riley  was  soon  to  find  a  moorage. 
The  lovable  chum,  alas!  was  never  to  find  one.  The 
Fates  tangled  his  feet  in  a  skein  of  ill-fortune  and  held 
them  in  it  to  the  end.  In  answer  to  the  letter  about  her 
silence,  the  girl  in  the  pine  woods  assured  him  of  her 
pride  in  the  possession  of  his  friendship.  He  was  her 
"dear  old  philosopher,"  to  be  so  patient  with  her.  "It 
is  a  good  thing  I  am  a  woman,"  she  wrote,  "for  if  I 
had  to  be  a  man  I'd  want  to  be  Riley.  You  belong  to 
us," — referring  to  her  love  for  the  Graphic  Chum.  "I 
love  you  next  to  him,  he  loves  you  next  to  me,  and  you 
love  me  after  him,  and  we  all  love  each  other.  Bless 
me,  what  a  cobweb!  M.mo,  Amas,  Amat — Amarrms, 
Amatis,  Amant.'  So  you  have  discovered  me  in  a  sea 
of  fiction.  To  know  that  one  has  been  discovered,  that 
one's  dear  old  friend  has  formed  an  opinion  at  last, 
and  yet  be  unable  to  know  what  it  is,  because  of  not 
having  read  Bleak  House.  Too  bad.  Of  course  I  shall 
read  the  book,  but  my  curiosity  is  aroused ;  tell  me  about 
her.  I  wonder  if  Dickens  affects  you  as  he  affects  me. 
Do  his  books  ever  make  you  feel  hungry? 

"You  are  very  strange.  In  your  bitter,  bitter  moods 
I  understand  you  and  know  you  best.  Ah,  don't  I  know 
what  they  are?  How  I  have  fought  and  fought,  bat- 


294  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

tling  all  alone  till  I  knew  that  they  made  me  older  than 
the  years  of  time.  You  can't  imagine  the  joy  with 
which  I  read  your  words.  Your  letters  are  like  a  mag 
netic  battery.  I  thank  you  for  the  poems.  They  are 
beautiful." 

Writing  him  at  another  time,  her  hands  trembled  as 
she  read  his  words.  His  earnestness  touched  her.  She 
smiled  with  tears  in  her  eyes  to  read  of  the  "Higher 
Power  than  ours  discovering  us  to  each  other."  He 
was  like  a  book  whose  mysteries  would  not  promptly 
unravel  at  her  bidding.  Little  by  little  she  followed  the 
thread  until  she  grasped  his  meaning.  "There  is  a 
beautiful  song,"  she  wrote,  "  'If  My  Wishes  Come 
True/  Maybe  you  know  it.  Learn  it  and  remember 
Dame  Durden  when  you  sing  it."  Then  she  discovered 
to  him  some  of  her  own  moods  and  confessed  to  many 
errors  of  her  way. 

He  did  not  learn  the  song,  but,  in  part,  wrote 
one  of  his  own,  "When  My  Dreams  Come  True" — 
or  rather,  in  imagination,  made  her  the  author 
of  it.  The  "Little  Woman"  must  not  be  cast  down  be 
cause  of  manifold  transgressions;  she  must  not  sink 
beneath  any  weight  of  woe.  Two  lines  were  written 
expressly  to  lighten  her  discouragement: 

"The  blossom  in  the  blackest  mold  is  kindlier  to  the  eye 
Than  any  lily  born  of  pride  that  looms  against  the  sky." 

Commenting  on  the  lines  and  their  origin,  at  a  later 
period,  Myron  Reed  observed  that  the  nectar  of  song 
is  distilled  from  the  dews  of  sorrow.  "Your  well  fed, 
nicely  groomed  poet,"  said  he,  "can  not  write  a  song 
of  the  people,  by  the  people,  and  for  the  people.  There 
must  have  been  mud  about  the  roots  of  a  pond  lily." 

In  June  (1876)  a  letter  came  and  she  ran  to  the  pine 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  295 

woods  to  read  it — "trembling  like  a  girl  of  sixteen." 
She  wanted  to  be  alone  to  thank  God  over  and  over  for 
her  Robin  Adair.  He  had  written  "The  Silent  Victors" 
in  the  law  office,  and  by  invitation  of  a  committee  had 
read  it  at  Newcastle  on  the  afternoon  of  Memorial 
Day— i 

"What  meed  of  tribute  can  the  poet  pay 
The  Soldiers,  but  to  trail  the  ivy-vine 
Of  idle  rhyme  above  their  graves  to-day?" 

In  imagination  she  had  seen  the  dusty  twenty  miles 
he  had  traveled  to  Newcastle — he  had  ridden  half-way 
on  horseback  and  had  walked  the  remainder.  And  she 
had  seen  the  beautiful  oak  grove  in  the  cemetery  where 
the  exercises  were  held,  where  the  young  poet  for  the 
first  time  had  stepped  before  the  public  on  a  national 
holiday.  She  had  heard  the  band  play  the  sweet  varia 
tions  of  the  old  Scottish  air, 

"Had  seen  his  trembling  hand—? 
Tears  in  his  eyelids  stand 
To  greet  his  native  land — • 
Robin  Adair," 

"I  am  so  proud  of  you — my  hero,"  she  wrote ;  "you 
are  worthy  the  laurels  you  have  won,  and  more,  from 
the  stingy  world.  Had  I  my  way  the  world  would  be  a 
flower  garden.  Fragrant  blossoms  would  pave  the 
pathway  your  willing  feet  would  tread  to  fame.  How 
I  wish  I  might  have  been  present  to  witness  your  suc 
cess  !  There  would  have  been  one  soul  of  that  crowd 
whose  joy  would  have  reached  your  own  and  whispered 
the  words  I  could  not  speak.  God  has  given  you  gifts 
He  bestows  on  few  of  His  children.  Your  words  go 
straight  to  the  heart.  I  am  proud  and  happy  in  your 
love." 


296  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"If  I  were  not  so  wretchedly  impecunious,"  Riley 
wrote  in  November,  1876,  "I  would  come  to  you  in  the 
disguise  of  a  rich  uncle  from  the  golden  Americas." 
In  the  absence  of  pounds  sterling  he  sent  a  letter. 
Dear  old  Uncle  Sam,  with  "the  precious  mite  of  a  three- 
cent  stamp  had  made  communication  of  lovers  possible." 
Referring  to  a  new  name  he  had  given  her,  he  said, 
"There  is  something  crisp  and  hearty  about  it.  I  feel 
your  presence  with  me,  and  will  all  winter. 

"I  sent  to  Longfellow  an  imitation  of  his  own  style 
entitled  'In  the  Dark/  and  after  the  method  of  what  I 
consider  his  finest  poem,  'The  Day  is  Done.'  Are  you 
familiar  with  it?  If  not  look  it  up.  When  you  find  it, 
study  it  closely,  and  then  compare  my  verses  with  it, 
and  see  if  they  are  not  really  a  clever  imitation  in  lan 
guage,  theme,  similes,  and  so  forth.  I  will  send  you  the 
poem  when  it  appears ;  I  know  you  will  like  it,  for  you 
were  in  my  mind  all  the  time  I  was  composing  it,  and 
I  have  no  doubt  that  truant  soul  of  yours  was  with  my 
own." 

As  was  the  rage  in  those  old  days  of  love,  there  was 
an  ample  exchange  of  photographs  and  tin-types.  Like 
other  poets,  Riley  sent  verse  with  his  portrait,  the 
"ghost  of  a  face,"  said  he,  in  "Lines  in  a  Letter  En 
closing  a  Picture."  There  went  with  them  also  many 
cheery  words  for  the  girl  with  the  hectic  bloom  on  her 
cheek  :— 

"I  send  you  the  shadowy  ghost  of  a  face 
To  haunt  you  forever — with  eyes 
That  look  in  your  own  with  the  tenderest  grace 
Affectionate  art  can  devise ; 
And  had  they  the  power  to  sparkle  and  speak 
In  the  spirit  of  smiles  and  tears, 
The  rainbow  of  love  would  illumine  your  cheek 
And  banish  the  gloom  that  appears. 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  297 

"The  lips  would  unlock  with  the  key  of  a  kiss 
And  the  jewels  of  speech  would  confess 
A  treasure  of  love  that  is  richer  than  this 
Poor  pencil  of  mine  may  express ; 
O  sweeter  than  bliss  were  the  whispering  things 
I'd  breathe,  and  your  answering  sighs 
Would  hold  Cupid  on  quivering  wings 
In  a  pause  of  exultant  surprise." 

In  one  letter  she  enclosed  the  picture  of  her  beauti 
ful  hand  holding  a  fan.  "I  send  you  the  shadow  of  my 
hand,"  she  wrote;  "it  was  made  on  a  wager,  one  day  in 
1875."  Riley  had  seen  the  picture,  a  tin-type  (it  will  be 
remembered),  the  previous  summer  when  he  and  Mc- 
Clanahan  had  raved  over  its  beauty.  Interest  in  it  had 
not  diminished.  She  had  twined  a  ribbon  and  a  tress  of 
her  brown  hair  around  it.  His  chum  could  never  say 
enough  about  the  beauty  of  her  hair.  Prior  to  receiv 
ing  her  letter,  Riley  had  written  his  poem,  "Her  Beau 
tiful  Hands."  He  had  kept  the  incident  of  its  origin 
a  secret;  indeed,  throughout  life  it  pleased  his  fancy 
to  keep  it  locked  in  "the  round-tower  of  his  heart."  It 
was  the  hand  of  his  ideal : 

"Marvelous — wonderful — beautiful  hands ! 
They  can  coax  roses  to  bloom  in  the  strands 
Of  your  brown  tresses ;  and  ribbons  will  twine, 
Under  mysterious  touches  of  thine 
Into  such  knots  as  entangle  the  soul 
And  fetter  the  heart  under  such  a  control 
As  only  the  strength  of  my  love  understands — 
My  passionate  love  for  your  beautiful  hands." 

The  lock  of  hair  was  kept  among  manuscripts  in  his 
trunk.  Once  afterward  when  rummaging  among  by 
gones  he  chanced  to  see  this  "wisp  of  sunshine,"  as  he 
called  it.  As  the  girl  of  the  pine  woods  had  married 
his  adorable  chum — f or  .that,  after  all,  was  the  way  it 


298  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

happened — there  came   the   suggestion   for  a   poem, 
"A  Tress  of  Hair": 

"Her  features — keep  them  fair, 
Dear  Lord,  but  let  her  lips  not  quite  forget 
The  love  they  kindled  once  is  gilding  yet 

This  tress  of  hair." 

A  British  poet  sings  of  the  unsolved  riddle  of  exist 
ence — why  the  bird  pipes  in  the  woods — why  the  owl 
sends  down  the  twilight — why  the  rocks  stand  still — • 
why  the  clouds  fly — why  the  oak  groans — why  the  wil 
lows  sigh? 

"How  you  are  you?    Why  I  am  I? 
Who  will  riddle  me  the  how  and  the  why?" 

Such  is  the  quandary  that  rises  in  the  mind  when  one 
reflects  on  the  poet-lover  and  the  "Golden  Girl."  Why 
should  their  love  end  in  the  sad — the  sweet — the 
strange  No  More?  At  first  he  suffered  from  her  silence, 
then  she  suffered  from  his  silence,  and  then  their 
suffering  was  mutual.  Out  of  that  suffering  came  sev 
eral  poems — three  that  were  strangely  sad  and  sadly 
sweet — "Say  Something  to  Me" — "An  Empty  Song" — ? 
and  "Song  of  Parting." 

"The  air  is  full  of  tender  prophecy,"  she  wrote  one 
Sunday  evening.  "  'Say  Something  to  Me'  went  straight 
to  my  heart  and  found  an  answering  thrill  for  all  the 
pleading  tenderness  of  the  words  your  gracious  pencil 
dropped,  though  my  lips  could  not  speak.  I  cried  when 
I  read  it,  as  once  I  cried  in  the  darkness  that  veiled  our 
clasped  hands  and  passion-burdened  eyes  from  the 
world  when  you  whispered  to  me,  'If  I  Should  Die  To 
night.'  You  remember  it — the  darkness  that  had  grown 
compassionate  and  pitiful,  and  veiled  the  whole  world 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  299 

in  gloom  to  give  us  an  hour  of  happiness  more  bright 
than  hour  of  daylight  ever  knew,  an  hour 

'In  which  the  heavy  and  the  weary  weight 
Of  all  this  unintelligible  world 
Was  lighted/ 

"I  can  find  no  words  to  tell  you  of  my  love,  how  I 
treasure  your  lightest  word,  for  my  stumbling  pencil 
is  devoid  of  all  the  subtle  power  that  hangs  about  your 
own.  I  can  not  trace  the  thoughts  that  wake  into  newer 
life  at  your  touch,  and  set  my  happy  answering  heart 
aglow,  for  before  my  stupid  fingers  have  well  begun 
their  task,  other  and  yet  other  thoughts  have  over 
thrown  the  kingdom  of  the  first  and  left  me  but  the 
sturdy  words,  I  LOVE  You.  Tell  me — My  Prophet — is 
that  future  surely  coming  to  us,  whose  brilliancy  fell 
in  a  golden  glory  that  covered  up  all  the  gloom  on  that 
'day  of  pure  gold'  of  which  you  write? — 

'Something  in  our  eyes  made  tears  to  glisten ; 
But  they  were  not  sad/  " 

Then  followed  "An  Empty  Song."  As  signified  in 
the  poem,  she  was  the  sun  of  his  heart  but  she  could 
not  shine  on  both  sides  of  it.  He  might  have  said  as 
he  did  say  in  another  poem  that 

"She  was  the  dazzling  Shine — I,  the  dark  Shade — 
And  we  did  mingle  like  to  these,  and  thus, 

Together,  made 
The  perfect  summer,  pure  and  glorious." 

But  there  was  a  shadow  of  the  heart,  "issue  of  its 
own  substance,"  he  phrased  it,  which  she  could  not 
lighten.  Her  radiance,  all-powerful  in  beauty  and  love, 
could  not  scatter  the  night  of  the  soul. 

And  then  the  "Song  of  Parting."    The  full  signifi- 


300  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

cance  of  the  poem  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  it  was,  in 
spirit,  a  joint  production;  the  lover  speaks  in  the  first 
and  second  stanzas,  the  "Badger  Girl,"  as  he  sometimes 
called  his  sweetheart,  in  the  last.  In  the  original  there 
are  such  lines  as — 

"Dp  not  weep — for  tears  are  vain—; 
Little  mists  of  foolish  rain. 

"Say  farewell,  and  let  me  go — 
Since  the  Fates  have  planned 
That  your  love  can  only  grow 
In  a  richer  land." 

Before  we  say  farewell,  the  "Badger  Girl"  shall  have 
a  few  words  more.  She  shall  tell  a  little  more  clearly, 
though  painfully,  her  own  story.  We  have  her  lover's 
story  in  his  poems.  Referring  to  the  shadow  on  his 
heart,  and  to  the  poems  of  that  period,  Riley  said,  "I 
wrote  with  my  heart's  own  blood."  He  was  not  alone 
in  his  despair.  She,  too,  wrote  with  her  heart's  own 
blood.  Surely  she  knew  herself  better  than  her  lover 
or  any  one  else  knew  her. 

At  their  first  meeting  there  were  of  course  revela 
tions  for  each,  which  the  poor  power  of  letters  had 
failed  to  impart.  Riley  deftly  concealed  his  sadness  at 
the  thought  of  her  declining  health.  "She  was  fragile 
as  a  lily,"  he  said,  "delicate  as  a  snowdrop."  But  there 
were  other  considerations  besides  health. 

"Each  had  another  life  they  longed  to  meet 
Without  which  life,  their  own  were  incomplete." 

The  meeting  did  not  reveal  that  other  life.  Whether 
it  would  have  been  revealed  had  her  health  been  re 
stored  is  mere  conjecture.  There  was  hope  of  her 
recovery,  but  it  was  hope  with  a  shadow.  One  thing 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  301 

is  clear,  if  we  accept  the  testimony  of  each,  their  meet 
ing  did  not  diminish  their  love.  They  talked  of  the 
paths  into  which  their  feet  had  strayed,  how  they  had 
walked  on  and  on,  dreaming,  hoping  that  "one  little 
corner  of  the  curtain  that  hid  the  future  from  their 
eyes  would  lift  and  discover  to  each  the  life  he  longed 
to  live.  God's  mysterious  hand  had  led  them  and  was 
still  to  lead  them  on." 

Henceforth  their  letters  were  candid  to  a  degree  that 
excites  sympathy.  "Will  you  understand  me  I  won 
der,"  the  lover  wrote  some  few  weeks  later,  "if  I  tell 
you  that  I  fear  I  am  going  to  make  you  unhappy?  Will 
you  understand  me  when  I  tell  you  that,  should  the 
premonition  prove  true,  your  unhappiness  would  be 
my  own?  I  fear  you  never  will  understand  just  what 
a  strange  paradox  I  am.  I  hardly  know  myself.  But 
you  must  not  think  too  kindly  of  me.  Not  that  I  do 
not  deserve  love,  but  rather  because  all  the  affection  I 
can  offer  in  return  is  as  vain  as  it  is  wild  and  fervid. 
If  I  could  take  your  hand  and  hold  it  as  I  say  these 
words,  you  would  know  how  deeply  sad  and  earnest 
and  most  truthful  I  am  in  this  belief.  My  life  has  been 
made  up  of  disappointments  and  despairs.  This  is  no 
fancy  with  me.  It  is  bitter,  bitter  truth.  I  have 
learned  to  bear  it  well.  I  have  learned  to  expect  but 
little  else.  I  ache,  but  I  grope  on  smiling  in  the  dark. 
You  are  not  strong  as  I  am  strong.  Your  tears  would 
overflow  your  path  and  sweep  you  back.  And  you  must 
not  know  what  I  endure.  God  made  you  to  be  glad; 
so  you  must  not  lean  too  far  out  of  the  sunshine  to 
help  me.  I  am  not  wholly  selfish  as  I  struggle  down 
here  in  the  gloom,  but  I  am  tired  and  so  worn  I  can 
but  grasp  your  hand  if  proffered — only  don't — don't. 
Just  hail  me  from  the  brink  with  cheery  words.  That 


302  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

will  be  best  for  you — and  as  for  me — why,  I  will  bo 
stronger  knowing  I  have  dragged  no  bright  hopes 
down  with  my  poor  drowning  ones.  My  whole  being 
goes  out  from  me,  and  I  am  calling  to  you  through  the 
great  distance  that  divides  us.  Do  you  hear?  God 
bless  you,  little  girl,  and  keep  you  always  glad  as  you 
are  good.  You  must  write  me  at  once.  I  dream  now 
that  your  face  is  drooped  a  little,  and  I  lift  it  with  my 
hand,  and  it  is  bright  and  beautiful.  So,  set  it  heaven 
ward  and  where  the  sunlight  falls,  and  I  will  see  its 
glancing  smiles  flash  back,  and  that  will  help  me  more 
than  words  will  say." 

"There  is  an  ache  in  your  heart,"  Riley  wrote  again, 
"which  can  never  be  conquered  or  tamed  down.  Like  a 
prisoned  bird,  it  beats  its  wings  against  the  bars  and 
makes  your  life  a  discord."  He  had  discord  in  his  own 
life;  to  wed  that  to  more  discord  meant  disaster  that 
was  not  all  personal.  He  would  shield  his  sweetheart 
from  such  a  destiny.  He  could  say  with  the  hapless 
Poe,  "Toward  you  there  is  no  room  in  my  soul  for  any 
other  sentiment  than  devotion.  It  is  fate  only  which  I 
accuse.  It  is  my  own  unhappy  nature." 

"0,  how  right  you  are,"  she  answered ;  "I  shiver  with 
the  jarring  sense  of  discord  as  I  write.  I  have  so  many 
faults,  so  much  pride ;  yet  I  must  be  earnest  with  you ; 
I  must  say  all — if  you  hate  me  for  it. 

I  am  digging  my  warm  heart 
Till  I  find  its  coldest  part ; 
I  am  digging  wide  and  low, 
Farther  than  a  spade  can  go. 

I  am  different,  so  different  from  your  ideal,  your  Tearl 
of  Pearls/  One  day  I  am  satisfied  with  all  the  world 
and  want  to  take  it  to  my  arms  and  caress  it — the  next, 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  303 

I  feel  sure  it  is  full  of  injustice  and  misery  underneath 
its  smiling  exterior,  and  I  descend  into  my  ice-house  of 
rebellion.  Then  I  listen  to  'soft  nothings'  with  radiant 
face  and  sparkling  eyes,  smile  into  faces  that  smile 
down  into  my  own,  do  a  happy  careless  laugh  to  perfec 
tion,  when  flat  things  are  said  in  the  way  of  compliment 
that  smack  of  having  been  committed  to  memory  in 
some  long  ago  when  some  one  fairer  than  I  had  in 
spired  their  utterance;  and  then  a  miserable  conceit 
takes  hold  of  me  like  death  and  I  say  to  myself,  'I  am 
in  shallow  water  and  must  wade  because  these  people 
know  no  deeper  soundings' — and  I  pity  them,  I  who  so 
much  need  forbearance  myself." 

"I  seem  not  to  make  you  understand  me,"  she  writes 
at  another  time.  "My  life  is  empty  and  purposeless  or 
has  been — and  yet  underneath  it  all  there  pulses  a 
great,  strong,  unconquerable  passion  for  something 
higher  and  better,  something  that  your  words  make  me 
dare  hope  is  almost  within  my  reach.  A  sense  there  is 
of  being  cramped  into  a  narrower  space  of  thought  and 
action  than  God  intended.  A  numbness,  too,  and  un 
consciousness  and  inability  to  use  with  intrepidity  the 
few  gifts  I  might  have  had ;  but  they  have  so  long  lain 
dormant  that  they  are  useless  and  withered  as  a  limb 
long  bandaged  from  the  air  and  sunshine.  I  dread  to 
be  misunderstood.  I  have  a  horror  of  miscellaneous 
pity.  But  you  seem  to  understand  me  better  than  the 
rest;  you  encourage  me  to  think  that  this  element  of 
— well,  I  can  not  name  it — this  inside  kernel,  this 
knaggy  knarl  would  have  made  me  infinitely  more 
worthy  of  you  had  I  been  rightly,  properly  kneaded  in 
the  first  place,  for  I  believe  I  was  put  together  like  a 
Chinese  puzzle  and  am  at  present  wrong-side-out  or  up- 


304  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

side-down  or  t'other-side-to  and  need  but  some  skillful 
hand  that  understands  the  machinery  to  put  me  right. 
I  think  there  is  a  secret  spring,  if  one  could  only  find 
it,  that  if  suddenly  touched  would  immediately  set  me 
straight,  like  a  stove-pipe  hat, — the  theatre  hat,  made 
of  springs,  don't  you  know.  You  know  what  I  mean — 
you  have  seen  them. 

"I  know  you  would  not  give  me  hope  and  aspirations 
if  you  imagined  they  would  come  to  naught.  I  can  but 
fresh  courage  take  from  your  words  and  honest  convic 
tions.  Do  not  wonder  that  my  hand  trembles  as  I 
write,  that  my  heart  bounds  again  with  joy — a  great 
joy  that  you  think  me  capable  of  something  better  than 
the  poor  fluttering  moth  that  I  seem  to  be." 

It  is  noteworthy  that  the  Little  Woman  first  reached 
the  conviction  that  they  could  never  marry.  Usually 
insight  and  foresight  are  attributed  to  man.  He  is  wis 
dom.  Woman  is  love.  But  love  is  wisdom  also  when 
lodged  in  the  heart  of  a  Dame  Durden.  By  combining 
wisdom  and  love,  Dickens  made  her  one  of  the  ador 
able  women  of  fiction — and  it  was  lovingly  complimen 
tary  in  Riley  to  give  his  sweetheart  the  name : 

"My  Little  Woman,  of  you  I  sing 
With  a  fervor  all  divine." 

It  was  said  at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter,  that 
Kiley  was  in  love  with  an  ideal.  It  may  now  be  said 
that  there  was  an  uncommon  measure  of  the  ideal  in 
the  "Golden  Girl,"  and  that  her  influence  like  an  angelic 
presence  remained  with  the  poet  through  the  "ten  pro 
lific  years"  that  succeeded  their  correspondence — the 
decade  that  saw  the  light  dawn  on  his  best  work. 

"Do  you  suppose  I  would  spoil  my  ideal  by  getting 
married?"  The  remark  is  attributed  to  Frances  Wil- 


HER  BEAUTIFUL  HAND 

From  a  tintype  taken  when  the  Golden  Girl  was  nineteen. 
Inspiration  for  the  poem :     "Her  Beautiful  Hands" 


WJIKN   THE  POET  WAS  TWENTY-FIVE 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  305 

lard.  Whatever  may  be  said  of  its  authenticity,  the 
thought  was  certainly  not  far  from  the  heart  of  the 
"Golden  Girl"  when  she  penned  to  Riley  the  following : 

"My  Dear  Friend,  the  dearest  friend  I  have  on  earth, 
believe  me  when  I  tell  you  your  letter  has  touched  me 
deeper  than  I  have  words  to  express.  I  am  stretching 
my  hands  out  to  you.  Take  them,  crush  them  till  the 
pain  deadens  the  terrible  anguish  and  pain  at  my  heart. 
I  am  coming  to  you  one  moment — 

'One  moment  that  I  may  forget 
The  trials  waiting  for  me  yet.' 

There  is  a  great,  yawning  dark  gulf  between  us — a 
hopeless  one.  You  know  not,  you  can  not,  dare  to  guess- 
it  nor  can  I  tell  you  more  now.  We  are  like  children 
groping  in  the  dark.  It  is  as  impossible  to  bridge  the 
gulf  or  in  any  way  lessen  the  distance,  as  it  is  for  me 
to  stifle  the  moan  that  rises  to  my  lips  when  I  think  of 
it.  That  gulf  can  never  be  crossed.  Mine  is  the  fault, 
mine  alone.  I  cross  to  this  side,  but  you  can  not 
follow." 

"A  brave  soul  is  a  thing  all  things  serve,"  she  quotes 
in  another  letter  and  then  goes  on  to  marvel  at  a  strange 
world,  hardly  knowing  what  to  make  of  it,  or  herself, 
or  her  lover,  or  any  one.  God  had  some  special  work 
for  her  when  He  created  her,  but  finding  some  other 
hands  perhaps  more  willing,  He  left  her  with  a  half- 
awakened  consciousness  of  what  she  had  lost — no  object 
in  life  to  bid  her  clamber  up  the  long  hill  whose  rugged 
steeps  then  echoed  with  the  footsteps  of  her  lover,  for 
"you,"  to  use  her  own  words,  "are  slowly,  surely  making 
your  way  with  noble  energy  to  the  top  of  the  mountain. 
As  you  pass  me  on  the  path  that  glitters  with  the  reflex 
of  tears  rained  from  many  weary  eyes  that  weep  no 
more  forever,  you  recognize  the  task  before  you  as  you 
never  did  before,  perhaps,  and  pity  me  as  I  sit  silent, 


306  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

discouraged,  mastered  by  the  first  obstacle  at  the  foot 
of  the  hill." 

Fragile — aimless  and  hopeless  as  she  thought,  per 
haps  after  all  her  influence  would  follow  him.  What 
could  he  do,  she  once  asked,  without  the  heart  of 
woman  ?  Her  answer  to  her  own  question  was  signifi 
cant. 

"What  could  he  do  indeed  ?    A  weak,  white  girl 
Held  all  his  heartstrings  in  her  small  white  hands ; 
His  hopes,  and  power,  and  majesty  were  hers, 
And  not  his  own." 

Feeling  thus,  a  new  thought  was  born  in  her  heart — a 
thought  that  God  had  meant  one  day  to  create  her  and 
her  lover  for  each  other.  "To  you,"  she  wrote,  "God 
gave  a  noble  manhood,  genius  to  love  and  appreciate 
His  holy  handiwork,  and  having  well  in  mind  the 
woman  He  should  send  you  by  and  by  to  make  your 
earth  a  heaven,  He  gave  you  a  heart  as  gentle  and 
kindly  as  ever  allotted  to  earth's  creatures,  and  set  you 
pure  and  stainless  to  await  my  coming. 

"Alas!  some  envious  hand  sullied  the  brightness  of 
the  picture  and  in  punishment  God  sent  me  unfinished, 
far  away  from  you  into  the  maelstrom  of  the  world,  and 
left  me  groping  blindly,  longing  for  the  treasure  I  had 
lost  yet  never  known.  And  a  dreary  sense  of  the  same 
bitter  loss  makes  you  long  for  'the  one  woman  on  earth' 
— makes  you  grieve  for  the  incompleteness  of  her  who 
should  have  been  your  ideal,  the  imperfection  of  the 
gem  that  you  hoped  to  find  perfect.  God  sent  us  apart 
and  has  kept  us  apart.  Will  we  ever  meet?  I  am  sorry 
for  you,  sorry  for  myself.  I  can  love  you — love  you  as 
no  mortal  yet  has  loved  you  when  I  remember  all  I 
might  have  been  for  your  sake — love  you  with  a  passion 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  307 

God  has  no  time  to  tone  down."  With  this  she  asks  of 
her  lover  in  a  closing  paragraph,  if  he  had  read  the 
Two  Destinies,  and  then  signs  herself,  "Yours  always." 

In  a  brief  note  a  few  days  later,  she  fears  the  clouds 
she  and  her  lover  thought  would  drop  in  dew  might 
scatter  snow.  She  wished  him  to  know  with  what  a 
masterly  hand  he  had  kindled  her  "into  fire — heap  of 
ashes  that  she  was — a  fire,  however,  inseparable  in  its 
nature  from  herself,  quickening  nothing,  lighting  noth 
ing,  doing  no  service,  idly  burning  away." 

"A  sad  story,"  her  friends  were  heard  to  say,  and 
doubtless  others  who  read  it  for  the  first  time  will  say 
the  same.  But  let  them  not  rue  it  as  an  exceptional 
fate.  True  love  leads  over  a  rough  and  thorny  way. 

Who  believes  that  the  influence  of  this  gifted  being 
ended  with  death? — she  who  "could  lay  her  fevered 
cheek  against  the  weeping  window  pane,  close  her  eyes, 
and  hear  in  the  dripping  rain  the  tread  of  trembling 
fairy  feet  on  the  roof?" — she 

"Who  felt  sometimes  the  wish  across  the  mind 
Rush  like  a  rocket  tearing  up  the  skies?" 

Dear  Little  Woman !  the  fire  of  your  love  is  still  burning 
— but  not  idly  burning.  Your  lover  jeweled  songs  with 
your  tears.  The  clouds  did  after  all  drop  dew. 

"From  his  flying  quill  there  dripped 
Such  music  on  his  manuscript 
That  they  who  listen  to  his  words 
May  close  their  eyes  and  dream  the  birds 
Are  twittering  on  every  hand 
A  language  they  can  understand." 

By  smiting  upon  the  chords  of  the  poet's  heart  with 
might,  the  Little  Woman  contributed  to  literature  the 
immortal  "Fame,"  according  to  his  father,  the  greatest 


308  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

poem  the  son  ever  wrote.    Alas,  for  the  Little  Woman ! 
it  did  not  augur  fame  for  her. 

If  the  reader  desires  to  know  how  the  "Golden  Girl's" 
courtship  ended  historically,  he  will  find  it  in  a  closing 
chapter  of  Bleak  House,  with  a  little  shade  to  color  it 
from  Enoch  Arden.  After  a  grievous  misunderstand 
ing,  McClanahan,  her  former  love,  "the  wreckless,  lov 
able  boy  with  the  good  heart  and  extravagant  ideas," 
returned  and  made  amends  for  his  absence  and  seem 
ing  neglect.  Unlike  the  Tennysonian  narrative,  she 
had  not  married  in  the  meantime,  although  she  had 
been  ardently  loved  by  Riley.  True  to  what  befell  in 
Bleak  House,  Riley  assumed  the  role  of  the  Guardian, 
restored  his  friend  to  the  old  place  in  her  love,  and 
consented  to  their  wedding,  "soothingly,  like  the  gentle 
rustling  of  the  leaves;  genially,  like  the  ripening 
weather;  radiantly  and  beneficently,  like  the  sun 
shine."  So  they  were  wed. 

"And  merrily  rang  the  bells, 
And  merrily  ran  the  years," 

two  transient,  happy  years,  a  steady  decline  in  the 
bride's  health — and  then  a  grave. 

There  was  truly  a  song  in  the  parting.  All  that  the 
future  could  bestow  was  welcome  now.  That  Riley 
worshiped  the  fair  hand  seemed  for  a  moment  a  mis 
take — and  thus  the  poem  "Say  Farewell  and  Let  Me 
Go."  But  it  was  not  a  life-long  good-by.  There 
was  but  one  remove  from  her  to  the  Muse  of 
Poesy.  Indeed,  as  the  years  came  with  their  opulence 
of  joy  and  sorrow,  the  memory  of  her  became  a  sacred 
presence.  When  he  and  his  friend  McClanahan  talked 
of  her,  there  was  pathos  in  his  voice  that  others  never 
heard  and  few,  had  they  heard,  could  understand.  The 
memory  of  her  kept  him  from  "a  selfish  grave."  It  was 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  309 

"The  one  bright  thing  to  save 
His  youthful  life  in  the  wilds  of  Time." 

The  distance  between  her  and  the  Muse  of  Song  was  so 
slight  that  he  often — more  seriously  than  his  friends 
suspected — referred  to  his  favorite  goddess  as  the 
Little  Woman,  styling  himself  the  Little  Man  beside 
her  in  his  bark,  on  their  poetic  way.  The  fates  had 
woven  her  into  the  warp  and  woof  of  his  destiny.  She 
was  the  "golden-haired,  seraphic  child/'  whose  flying 
form  was  ever  plying  between  his  "little  boat"  and  the 
driving  clouds.  His  own  version  of  the  Muse  seems  a 
dancing  phantom.  Nevertheless,  she  was  the  Queen 
of  "the  rosebud  garden  of  girls."  She  was  the  "beau 
tiful  immortal  figure,"  she  was  the  "Empress  of  his 
listening  Soul," 

"The  Parian  phantomette,  with  head  atip 
And  twinkling  fingers  dusting  down  the  dews" 

that  glittered  on  the  leaves  of  simple  things, — he,  the 
wooing  Jucklet  standing  knee-deep  in  the  grass,  waiting 
for  the  fragrant  shower. 

Thinking  to  disarm  the  critics,  Riley  called  his  por 
trait  of  the  Muse  a  monstrosity  of  rhyme,  but  time  has 
long  since  relieved  it  of  that  imputation.  "The  phantom 
left  me  at  sea,"  said  he  a  score  of  years  after  he  had 
come  under  the  mesmeric  spell.  "After  I  had  written 
the  lines  they  worried  me  a  great  deal.  I  did  not  fully 
comprehend  them  then,  nor  do  I  now."  In  "An  Adjust 
able  Lunatic"  where  the  lines  appear,  he  says  his  "mind 
was  steeped  in  dreamy  languor,  and  yet  peopled  with  a 
thousand  shadowy  fancies  that  came  from  chaotic 
hiding-places  and  mingled  in  a  revelry  of  such  riotous 
extravagance  it  seemed  a  holiday  of  phantom  thought." 
The  music  of  the  Muse  rippled  mystically  from  her 
harp.  It  was  the  despair  of  mortals — 


310  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

.     .     .    .    "the  pulse  of  invoiced  melodies 

Timing  the  raptured  sense  to  some  refrain 

That  knows  nor  words,  nor  rhymes,  nor  euphonies." 

It  belonged  to  that  higher  region  of  poetry  of  which 
Longfellow  talked  when  Riley  called  to  see  him  at  the 
Craigie  Mansion.  "It  is  too  delicate,"  said  Longfel 
low,  "for  the  emotions  and  aspirations  of  the  human 
heart — too  fragile  for  the  touch  of  analysis.  The 
thought  like  the  exquisite  odor  of  a  flower,  losing  all 
palpable  embodiment,  is  veiled  and  often  lost  in  the 
mist  of  its  own  spiritual  loveliness." 

It  was  just  this  impalpable  something  that  Riley  saw 
as  in  a  trance  or  dream  but  could  not  express.  Some 
where,  with  unseen  wings  brushing  past  him,  a  lawn 
bespangled  with  flowers  unrolled  beneath  his  feet.  On 
his  ear  fell  a  storm  of  gusty  music, 

"And  when  at  last  it  lulled  and  died, 
I  stood  aghast  and  terrified. 
I  shuddered  and  shut  my  eyes, 
And  still  could  see  and  feel  aware 
Some  mystic  presence  waited  there; 
And  staring  with  a  dazed  surprise, 
I  saw  a  creature  so  divine 
That  never  subtle  thought  of  mine 
May  reproduce  to  inner  sight 
So  fair  a  vision  of  delight. 

"A  syllable  of  dew  that  drips 
From  out  a  lily's  laughing  lips 
Could  not  be  sweeter  than  the  word 
I  listened  to,  yet  never  heard. — 
For,  oh,  the  woman  hiding  there 
Within  the  shadows  of  her  hair, 
Spake  to  me  in  an  undertone 
So  delicate,  my  soul  alone 
But  understood  it  as  a  moan 
Of  some  weak  melody  of  wind 
A  heavenward  breeze  had  left  behind." 


THE  GOLDEN  GIRL  311 

There  was  a  tracery  of  trees  in  the  sky  near  the  horizon 
toward  which  the  dreamer  gazed,  a  background  of 
dusky  verdure  for  the  vision  of  womanly  loveliness  that 
stood  beautiful  and  statuesque  before  it.  She  loomed 
there  in  the  twilight  as  if  the  spirit-hand  of  Angelo 
had  chiseled  her  to  life  complete : — 

"And  I  grew  jealous  of  the  dusk, 
To  see  it  softly  touch  her  face, 
As  lover-like  with  fond  embrace 
It  folded  round  her  like  a  husk: 
But  when  the  glitter  of  her  hand, 
Like  wasted  glory  beckoned  me, 
My  eyes  grew  blurred  and  dull  and  dim — 
My  vision  failed — I  could  not  see — > 
I  could  not  stir — I  could  not  stand, 
Till  quivering  in  every  limb, 
I  flung  me  prone,  as  though  to  swim 
The  tide  of  grass  whose  waves  of  green 
Went  rolling  ocean-wide  between 
My  helpless  shipwrecked  heart  and  her 
Who  claimed  me  for  a  worshiper." 


CHAPTER  XV 

LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE 

A  STOUT  champion  of  scientific  thought,  whose 
habit  was  to  deal  with  the  elemental  truth 
of  things,  adorns  English  literature  with  a 
memorable  picture  of  the  game  of  human  life — the 
game  which  has  been  played  for  untold  ages,  every 
man  and  woman  of  us  being  one  of  the  two  players 
in  a  game  of  his  or  her  own.  "The  world  is  a  chess 
board,"  he  says ;  "the  pieces  are  the  phenomena  of  the 
universe,  the  rules  of  the  game  are  what  we  call  the 
laws  of  Nature.  The  player  on  the  other  side — a  calm 
strong  angel  who  is  playing  with  us  for  love  as  we  say 
— is  hidden  from  us.  We  know  that  his  play  is  always 
fair,  just  and  patient.  But  also  we  know  to  our  cost  that 
he  never  overlooks  a  mistake,  or  makes  the  smallest 
allowance  for  ignorance.  To  the  man  who  plays  well, 
the  highest  stakes  are  paid,  with  that  sort  of  overflow 
ing  generosity  with  which  the  strong  delight  in 
strength.  And  the  one  who  plays  ill  is  checkmated — 
without  haste,  but  without  remorse." 

.  An  inspiring  conception,  provided  one  sees  it  as 
Riley  saw  it — a  thing  divine.  Without  that,  clouds  and 
mountains,  the  stars  spinning  through  space  were  but 
vanishing  dust  and  vapor.  Back  of  physical  splendor 
and  terror,  below,  within  and  above  the  law  of  Nature, 
this  side  and  beyond  the  Calm  Angel,  the  poet  saw 
the  sublime  miracle  of  the  Infinite  All-in-All,  of  which 
the  chessboard  of  the  world  is  the  manifestation. 

312 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE    313 

Education  is  learning  the  rules  of  this  mighty  game 
— man  in  loving  communication  with  Nature  and  the 
God  of  Nature :  "the  study  of  men  and  their  ways — the 
fashioning  of  the  affections  and  of  the  will,"  that  he 
may  live  in  harmony  with  universal  laws.  Not  an  easy 
task,  not  now  idly  dreaming  in  an  empty  day.  Riley 
has  had  the  vision  of  his  mission:  he  has  chosen  a 
passenger  for  his  "little  boat,"  the  lively  Muse  of 
Song.  How  will  he  play  the  mighty  game?  Some 
have  said  he  played  it  foolishly,  but  they  say  this  in 
ignorance  of  the  facts. 

"As  in  a  game  ov  cards,"  his  friend  Josh  Billings 
once  remarked,  "so  in  the  game  ov  life,  we  must  play 
what  iz  dealt  tew  us;  and  the  glory  konsists  not  so 
much  in  winning  as  in  playing  a  poor  hand  well."  A 
college  training  and  superior  opportunities  of  culture 
were  not  dealt  to  the  Poet  of  the  People.  Sometimes 
he  whined  over  his  lot ;  sometimes  he  talked  back.  Nev 
ertheless  he  became  human  and  lovable.  He  played 
a  poor  hand  well. 

Among  the  first  things  he  did  after  his  vision  was  to 
seek  light  and  counsel  from  eminent  litterateurs — and 
it  took  courage  to  do  it.  Distinguished  authors  in  their 
books  had  been  profitable  company,  but  to  approach 
them  directly  concerning  himself  was  different.  Never 
then,  and  seldom,  if  ever,  in  his  maturer  years,  did  he 
"run  the  risk  of  becoming  proud  of  his  powers  and 
abilities."  He  was  modest.  His  timidity  was  painful. 
To  write  about  genius  was  to  assume  that  he  had 
genius,  and  of  this  he  was  not  at  all  certain.  Nor  was 
he  certain  any  one  could  tell  him.  At  the  last  it  was — 
"Trust  in  Providence  and  his  own  efforts." 

Then,  too,  it  was  perhaps  a  burden  on  older  authors 
which  young  writers  should  not  inflict.  It  is  one  of  the 


314  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

penalties  of  eminence,  Reynolds  had  said,  to  be  obliged, 
as  a  matter  of  courtesy,  to  give  opinions  upon  the  at 
tempts  of  the  dull.  Mark  Twain  would  not  do  it.  "No," 
he  wrote  in  the  old  "Galaxy"  magazine,  where  Riley 
first  learned  to  love  him,  "no,  I  will  not  venture  any 
opinion  whatever  as  to  the  literary  merit  of  a  young 
writer's  productions.  The  public  is  the  only  critic 
whose  judgment  is  worth  anything  at  all.-  If  I  honestly 
and  conscientiously  praise  his  manuscript,  I  might  thus 
help  to  inflict  a  lingering  and  pitiless  bore  upon  the 
public ;  if  I  honestly  and  conscientiously  condemn  it,  I 
might  thus  rob  the  world  of  an  undeveloped  Dickens  or 
Shakespeare." 

Writing  the  eminent  for  encouragement  was  the  rage 
among  aspiring  Hoosiers  in  the  seventies.  There  was 
an  occasional  skeptic,  who  considered  it  a  sleeveless 
errand — "whistling  jigs  to  a  mile-stone" — but  the  cur 
rent  sentiment  favored  it.  Aldrich,  when  a  young 
man,  had  received  a  letter  from  Hawthorne  warmly 
praising  his  early  poems,  and  had  kept  "the  pearl  of 
great  price"  among  his  autographic  treasures  to  the 
end  of  his  days.  Mark  Twain  had  been  warmly  com 
plimented  on  his  first  book,  in  a  letter  from  Oliver 
Wendell  Holmes.  Henry  George  had  a  letter  from  John 
Stuart  Mill,  which  sent  him  to  his  study  and  to  fame. 
Longfellow  had  been  signally  helped  at  the  age  of 
eighteen.  Jared  Sparks  had  shown  him  that  "his  style 
was  too  ambitious;  his  thoughts  and  reflections  were 
good,  but  wanted  maturity  and  betrayed  a  young 
writer." 

Among  the  first  of  the  "rising  Hoosiers"  to  receive 
one  of  the  coveted  letters  was  the  Schoolmaster,  Lee  0. 
Harris.  His  friends  encouraged  him.  That  man  was 
a  poet,  they  thought,  who — 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     315 

"saw  the  Morn  arise 

Like  Venus  from  a  sea  of  mist, 
And  blushes  redden  all  the  skies 
When  Night  and  Morning  kissed.  " 

Authors  were  certain  to  take  notice  of  such  verse. 
Whittier  wrote  of  the  "rhythmical  sweetness"  in  the 
teacher's  poems.  Trowbridge  thought  "they  showed  a 
sufficient  mastery  of  language  to  warrant  obedience  to 
any  literary  impulse."  Longfellow  liked  "Sunset  Be 
hind  the  Clouds"  and  suggested  a  few  changes  with 
the  hope  that  the  young  pedagogue  would  not  think  him 
hypercritical:  "the  real  merit  of  the  poem  made  him 
speak  frankly." 

Maurice  Thompson,  more  ambitious  than  the  rest, 
sought  counsel  in  foreign  lands,  and  received  the  fol 
lowing  from  Victor  Hugo:  "Young  man,  hold  your 
head  right!  The  stars  are  not  really  in  clear  water. 
Those  are  shams.  Look  up  always  as  you  do  now. 
Labor  Limae — sic  itwr  ad  astra.  (Labor  to  the  end: 
such  is  the  way  to  immortality.)  I  reach  across  the 
ocean  to  you.  I  hope  the  young  men  coming  after  me 
will  do  strongly  what  I  have  feebly  begun." 

After  a  restless  period  of  hesitation  and  deliberation, 
Riley  wrought  his  courage  up  to  the  sticking  point. 
That  done,  the  rest  was  easy.  First  of  all,  he  would 
write  his  patron  saint — Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 
And  that  was  to  be  expected.  "When  a  boy,"  he  said, 
"I  giggled  on  hearing  the  name  'Longfellow*  but  it  soon 
became  positively  poetical  and  musical  to  me."  When 
quite  a  young  man  he  considered  it  "a  liberal  education 
for  a  poet  just  to  read  Longfellow."  At  the  poet's 
grave  he  said,  "The  touch  of  his  hand  was  a  prayer  and 
his  speech  a  blessed  psalm."  As  early  as  1868,  at  young 


316  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Riley's  suggestion,  the  Greenfield  Commercial,  an  ob 
scure  county  paper,  followed  the  poet  on  his  tour 
through  Europe,  there  appearing  as  late  as  October 
such  locals  as,  "Longfellow  at  last  accounts  was  doing 
the  Paris  picture  galleries." 

Prior  to  writing  Longfellow,  Riley  had  had  the  let 
ter  from  Donald  G.  Mitchell  about  a  "very  graceful 
poem,"  with  the  accompanying  hope  that  he  would 
"not  be  discouraged  from  further  exercise  of  his  liter 
ary  talent."  This  was  followed  with  one  from  the 
Danbury  News:  "Let  me  say,"  wrote  the  editor,  "that 
you  are  a  good  writer  and  a  promising  one,  and  bye 
and  bye,  if  you  keep  on  improving  as  you  have,  you 
will  acquire  what  is  everything  to  the  scribe — fame; 
and  this  secured  your  writing  will  command  remunera 
tion  of  your  own  figuring.  At  the  moment  it  is  up-hill 
work.  Perseverance  is  your  best  ammunition.  More 
wounded  than  killed  in  the  great  battle  of  pen-and- 
ink." 

One  "dapperling  of  comfort"  from  Lee  0.  Harris, 
Riley  remembered  in  love  long  after  the  applause  of  the 
world  had  become  uninteresting.  "Dear  old  friend," 
wrote  the  Schoolmaster  in  October,  1876,  "and  fellow 
convict  on  the  chain  gang  of  phantasy.  I  have  taken 
upon  myself  the  task  of  trying  to  find  a  publisher." 
(Collaborating  with  B.  S.  Parker,  the  literary 
fledglings  were  feebly  attempting  something  in  book 
form.  All  three  "confessed  to  two  of  the  oddest  infirm 
ities  in  the  world" :  one,  that  they  had  no  idea  of 
time ;  the  other,  that  they  had  no  idea  of  money.)  "Un 
less  we  do  find  a  publisher,"  Harris  continues,  "I  do 
not  see  what  we  can  do.  Parker  has  no  money  and  I 
expect  you  have  about  half  as  much  as  he  has  and  I 
have  less  than  both  of  you.  Your  'August*  is  good ; 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     317 

'The  forest  stands  in  silence,  drinking  deep 
Its  purple  wine  of  shade/ 

was  written  by  a  true  poet." 

Other  testimonials  have  passed  into  oblivion,  but 
that  one  stands  the  test  of  time.  When  recalling  it, 
Riley  was  once  reminded  of  what  Emma  Abbott  said 
to  her  friend  Reed.  The  young  singer  had  been 
stranded  on  the  road  and  Reed  had  paid  her  fare  to  the 
next  town.  "Myron  Reed,"  she  said,  calling  at  his 
home  in  the  noontide  of  her  fame,  "I  have  come  to 
thank  you  for  the  ten  dollars  you  loaned  me.  Ten 
dollars,  when  one  must  have  it,  is  worth  more  than  one 
hundred  thousand  dollars  when  one  does  not  need  it." 
So  Riley  thought  of  the  little  postscript  of  praise  from 
the  Schoolmaster. 

Having  written  two  letters  to  eminent  authors,  Riley 
was  suddenly  confronted  with  the  loss  of  their  ad 
dresses.  It  was  the  dawning  of  his  lifelong  distress 
over  his  inability  to  find  things  he  had  so  carefully  put 
away — "A  place  for  everything,"  he  would  repeat  when 
hopelessly  seeking  letters  in  his  desk,  "a  place  for 
everything  and  everything  some  place  else." 

"I  should  be  handled  by  the  Grand  Jury,"  said  he, 
"for  not  knowing  the  address  of  Longfellow."  But  he 
did  not  know  it;  hence  the  following  to  the  School 
master,  who  was  then  teaching  in  Lewisville,  Indiana : 

Greenfield,  November  20,  1876. 
Dear  Harris — 

I  intended  to  take  down  the  addresses  of  those  two 
celebrities  while  you  were  here.  Will  you  furnish  them, 
please,  by  mail  and  any  others  you  may  know  of? 

I  have  my  letters  "calked  and  primed"  and  only  await 
your  kindness.  Yours, 

J.  W.  R. 


318  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

The  addresses  (answered  his  Schoolmaster)  are, 
Henry  W.  Longfellow,  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  and 
John  T.  Trowbridge,  Arlington,  Massachusetts. 

Having  addressed  the  envelopes,  Riley  hastened  to 
the  post-office.  "I  approached  the  letter  box  with 
trembling,"  said  he, — "held  my  letter  in  my  hand,  hesi 
tating  and  turning  it  over,  wondering  whether  I  had 
omitted  something  or  had  written  something  I  should 
not  write.  I  had  enclosed  three  poems,  'In  the  Dark/ 
'A  Destiny'  (now  entitled  'A  Dreamer*),  and  'If  I 
Knew  What  Poets  Know.'  Should  I  have  enclosed 
others,  or  were  they  my  best  ?  I  did  not  know."  The 
letter  he  dropped  in  the  box  was  as  follows : 

Greenfield,  Indiana,  November  20,  1876. 
Mr.  Henry  W.  Longfellow — 

Dear  Sir:  I  find  the  courage  to  address  you  as  I 
would  a  friend  since  by  your  works  you  have  proven 
yourself  a  friend  to  the  world.  I  would  not,  however, 
intrude  upon  you  now  did  I  not  feel  that  you  alone  could 
assist  me. 

For  a  few  weeks  I  have  been  gaining  some  praise 
for  poems  written  with  no  higher  ambition  than  to 
please  myself  and  friends ;  but  as  many  of  them  have 
been  copied  through  the  country  and  the  fascination  of 
writing  has  grown  upon  me,  I  would  like  to  enter  the 
literary  field  in  earnest,  were  I  assured  I  possessed  real 
talent.  I  have  sometimes  thought  so,  and  again  have 
been  very  doubtful  in  that  regard.  About  two  years 
since  I  sent  a  poem  to  Hearth  and  Home,  and  it  was 
received  and  published  with  illustrations.  I  had  given 
them  the  poem,  but  they  paid  me  for  it,  a  small  though 
handsome  sum  to  me,  and  I  was  encouraged  to  send 
another,  which  I  did,  but  the  journal  was  just  suspend 
ing  as  it  reached  them.  My  manuscript  was  returned, 
with  a  kindly  note  from  Donald  G.  Mitchell,  the  retiring 
editor,  advising  me  to  continue  the  exercise  of  what  he 
was  pleased  to  term  "my  literary  talent." 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     319 

I  enclose  for  your  inspection  two  or  three  of  my 
better  efforts,  hoping  to  elicit  from  you  a  word  of  com 
ment  and  advice.  If  without  merit  or  promise,  your 
telling  me  so  will  make  me  happy,  and  if  the  contrary, 
encouragement  will  give  me  strength  to  do  as  you  may 
be  pleased  to  advise. 

With  profound  respect,  I  remain  your  humble  servant 
and  admirer,  J.  W.  RILEY. 

Having  mailed  the  letter  there  followed  a  ten  days' 
suspense.  Time  hung  heavily  over  Greenfield.  "Ten 
days !"  said  Riley,  drawling  out  the  words ;  "it — was — 
ten — weeks.  Every  hour  I  grew  more  doubtful  of  an 
answer  from  Longfellow.  I  was  told  the  last  thing  he 
wanted  to  do  was  to  give  an  opinion  of  other  people's 
poems.  My  head  was  full  of  suspicions — my  letter 
might  not  reach  him — he  might  be  sick,  and  so  forth. 
The  opiate  for  my  perturbation  was  'The  Spanish 
Student.'  It  was  soothing  to  read  it.  I  was  in  love 
and  like  the  Student  confronted  with  the  awful  mystery 
of  Life." 

There  was  another  cause  for  his  perturbation.  He 
was  wrestling  with  his  new  poem,  "Fame."  Many 
waves  broke  upon  the  "seashore  of  his  mind."  One 
night 

"The  loud  and  ponderous  mace  of  Time 
Knocked  at  the  golden  portals  of  the  day," 

before  he  slept.  Recalling  the  night,  he  talked  of  phan 
toms  that  filled  the  air,  and  how  the  silence  was 
haunted  by  the  ghosts  of  sound.  There  were  "strange 
cracks  and  tickings,  the  rustling  of  garments  that  have 
no  substance  in  them,  and  the  tread  of  dreadful  feet, 
that  would  leave  no  mark  on  the  sea-sand  or  the  winter 
snow."  He  had  a  vision  of  fame,  but  it  did  not  "make 


320  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

the  night  glorious  with  its  smile."    What  he  saw  was 
the  fame  of  a  man 

"Who  journeyed  on  through  life,  unknown, 
Without  one  friend  to  call  his  own ; 
No  sympathetic  sob  or  sigh 
Of  trembling  lips — no  sorrowing  eye 
Looked  out  through  tears  to  see  him  die." 

It  seems  relevant  to  note  here  that  "Fame"  was  not 
written  in  a  night.  There  was  time  for  suggestions 
from  the  "Golden  Girl."  "The  poem,"  he  said,  "re 
quired  the  revision  and  reconstruction  of  weeks." 
Changes  occurred  up  to  the  very  month  of  its  publica 
tion  in  the  Earlhamite  of  Earlham  College,  February, 
1877. 

Riley  had  been  blessed  with  the  vision  of  his  mis 
sion,  but  poets,  like  other  mortals,  if  they  do  their 
work,  must  have  their  crust  of  bread.  It  was  literally 
true  that  he  had  less  money  than  his  Schoolmaster 
who  had  none — for  he  was  in  debt.  In  his  extremity, 
he  had  decided  to  replenish  his  exchequer  by  favor 
ably  answering  another  call  from  the  Graphic  Com 
pany,  when,  like  a  breath  from  Araby,  came  a  letter 
from  the  "Golden  Girl,"  which  made  it  more  than  a 
mere  fancy  of  hers  that  she  held  in  her  "weak  white 
hands"  his  hopes  and  fortune.  Gaunt  starvation  must 
be  vanquished,  but  not  by  wasting  time  with  the 
"Graphics."  The  wandering  desire  for  travel  and 
money  was  fatal.  In  those  doubtful  weeks  she  gave 
him  courage.  "Her  mirth,"  he  said,  "was  like  a  zephyr 
challenging  the  East  Wind."  As  she  saw  it,  the  new 
poet  could  do  anything.  "I  say,"  she  wrote,  rallying 
him  on  his  fertility  of  resources,  "did  you  ever  teach 
school  or  sell  sewing  machines?"  Then  she  grew  seri 
ous;  her  love  "reached  over  the  endless  sea  of 


rO^t       lLfint.« 


THE  SECOND  LETTER  FROM  LONGFELLOW 
(OVER) 


. : 

& 


vf 


trUiL* 


+J 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     321 

absence."  She  wanted  to  feel  the  presence  of  the  hand 
that  had  fashioned  so  many  beautiful  messages.  "And 
you  are  going  away  with  the  'Graphics'?  I  am  sorry. 

'I  can't  quite  make  it  clear, 
It  seems  so  horrid  queer/ 

I  wish  I  might  whisper  to  you  all  the  rare  diamonds  of 
thought  Hope  flings  at  my  feet  to-day." 

While  struggling  with  his  new  poem  and  doubting  in 
himself  what  to  do  for  a  living,  Riley  was  prompted  to 
call  at  the  post-office  and  this  is  what  he  found : 

Cambridge,  Nov.  30, 1876. 
My  Dear  Sir : 

Not  being  in  the  habit  of  criticising  the  productions 
of  others,  I  can  not  enter  into  any  minute  discussion  of 
the  merits  of  the  poems  you  send  me. 

I  can  only  say  in  general  terms  that  I  have  read 
them  with  great  pleasure,  and  think  they  show  the  true 
poetic  faculty  and  insight. 

The  only  criticism  I  shall  make  is  on  your  use  of  the 
word  prone  in  the  thirteenth  line  of  "Destiny."  Prone 
means  face-downward.  You  meant  to  say  supine,  as 
the  context  shows. 

I  return  the  printed  pieces,  as  you  may  want  them 
for  future  use,  and  am,  my  Dear  Sir,  with  all  good 
wishes,  Yours  very  truly, 

HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW. 

But  one  result  could  follow.  To  borrow  his  own 
words,  he  was  "in  a  perfect  hurricane  of  delight."  He 
walked  away  from  the  post-office,  not  through  the 
streets  of  Greenfield,  but  "through  some  enchanted 
city,  where  the  pavements  were  of  air;  where  all  the 
rough  sounds  of  a  stirring  town  were  softened  into 
gentle  music;  where  everything  was  happy;  where 
there  was  no  distance  and  no  time." 


322  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"Gently  his  pathway  turned  from  night ; 
The  hills  swung  open  to  the  light ; 
And  on  his  fortune's  farther  side 
He  saw  the  hilltops  glorified." 

The  hour  had  arrived  for  that  old  faithful  clock,  the 
Greenfield  Democrat,  to  strike  again.  Under  the  cap 
tion,  Our  Poet,  the  editor  printed  the  Longfellow  letter 
and  commented  upon  "the  poetic  merits  of  our  young 
fellow  townsman,  James  W.  Riley.  We  are  gratified 
to  learn  that  his  poetic  talent  has  not  only  been  appre 
ciated  by  his  friends  at  home,  but  has  received  the 
recognition  of  America's  most  eminent  poet.  The 
Democrat  is  proud  of  having  one  among  us  whose 
brilliant  future  is  almost  assured,  and  by  way  of  en 
couragement  reminds  our  young  friend  that 

'Poets  have  undoubted  right  to  claim, 

If  not  the  greatest,  the  most  lasting  name.' " 

The  Schoolmaster  rejoiced  that  his  "winter  of  dis 
content  was  made  glorious  summer  by  this  sun  of  the 
Muses.  Do  you  recall  the  days,"  he  asks  Riley,  "we 
used  to  spend  together  under  the  beech  trees  at  the  old 
schoolhouse,  when  we  were  several  years  younger  than 
now,  the  days  we  strayed  like  the  breeze  among  the 
blossoms  ? 

'When  Hope  clung  feeding,  like  a  bee, 
And  Love  and    Life  went  a-Maying 
With  Nature,  Faith  and  Poesy'?" 

He  then  warns  Riley  that  Pegasus  is  frequently 
refractory.  "You  may  have,"  he  added,  "a  whole 
week  of  jubilant  exultation — a  week  of  con 
stant  dashing  hither  and  thither  upon  your 
winged  steed — sometimes  among  the  clouds,  some 
times  above  the  stars — a  hand  upon  the  rein  and 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     323 

he  obeys,  a  touch  with  the  heel  and  he  flies,  until  the 
whole  earth  lies  beneath  you,  and  all  its  inexhaustible 
wealth  of  beautiful  imagery  is  at  your  command  and 
then — a  balk — a  halt — a  fall — and  Helicon  a  mole-hill 
— Hippocrene  a  mud  puddle — and  Pegasus  *a  mule, 
braying  for  his  fodder." 

His  friend,  B.  S.  Parker,  sent  congratulations,  but 
warned  Riley  not  to  "feel  too  much  flattered,  but  to 
proceed  discreetly,  to  cultivate  the  acquaintance  of 
other  distinguished  and  influential  men  of  letters."  Nor 
must  he  "feel  greatly  grieved  or  disheartened  if  some 
should  snub  him."  Parker  had  had  gratifying  letters, 
but  "they  had  done  him  no  further  good  than  the  mo 
mentary  bliss  they  had  occasioned." 

It  is  a  great  event,  it  has  been  said,  for  a  young 
writer  to  receive  his  first  letter  from  a  great  man. 
"He  can  never  receive  letters  enough  from  famous  men 
afterward  to  obliterate  that  one,  or  dim  the  memory 
of  the  pleasant  surprise  it  was  and  the  gratification  it 
gave  him.  Lapse  of  time  can  not  make  it  common 
place  or  cheap."  As  to  the  memory  of  it,  this  was  true 
of  Riley.  The  Longfellow  letter  was  his  pearl  of  great 
price,  but,  unlike  Aldrich,  he  did  not  caress  it  as  an 
autographic  treasure  to  the  end  of  his  days.  He 
carried  it  in  his  "reticule"  a  year  or  so,  then  laid 
it  away  and  saw  it  no  more.  Again  it  was — "Trust 
in  Providence  and  in  his  own  efforts."  The  con 
viction  was  borne  in  upon  him  that  there  is  but 
one  straight  road  to  success  and  that  is  merit. 
Capacity  lacked  not  opportunity.  It  could  not 
forever  remain  undiscovered.  Letters  from  the  dis 
tinguished  never  had  made  a  young  writer  great  and 
never  could.  God  would  not  have  it  so.  Each  writer, 
with  fear  and  trembling,  had  to  work  out  his  own  lit- 


324  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

erary  salvation.  Some  have  thought  that  had  Long 
fellow  written  Riley  that  his  poems  were  without  merit 
or  promise,  his  literary  ambitions  would  have  come 
suddenly  to  an  end.  Reporters  have  made  him  say: 
"I  made  up  my  mind  if  Longfellow  said  'No/  I  would 
quit  all  that  kind  of  thing  forever."  He  never  said  it. 
One  adverse  criticism  could  not  have  overcome  his  na 
tive  tendency.  The  impulse  to  write  was  so  powerful 
that  escape  from  it  was  inconceivable.  As  late  as  1879, 
while  painting  a  sign  to  earn  his  daily  bread,  this  im 
pelling  force  was  sufficient  to  bring  him  down  the 
ladder  to  write  a  poem. 

Among  other  lessons  he  learned  from  the  letter  was 
the  value  one  should  attach  to  words.  Henceforth  he 
would  study  their  use  and  abuse.  When  his  poem, 
"A  Vision  of  Summer,"  "warmed  him  through  and 
through  with  tropical  delight,"  he  lay  supine — thanks 
to  Longfellow — not  prone. 

"On  grassy  swards,  where  the  skies,  like  eyes, 
Look  lovingly  back  to  mine." 

Almost  immediately  he  made  use  of  the  letter  to 
thaw  out  the  icy  East.  He  wrote  and  illustrated  a 
"serio-humorous  poem,"  "The  Funny  Little  Fellow," 
and  sent  it  to  Scribner's.  He  felt  certain  his  illustra 
tions  were  as  good  as  the  average  found  in  "Bric-a- 
Brac"  of  that  monthly.  It  was  a  good  idea  to  combine 
both  poet  and  artist.  "I  backed  up  my  ability  with  my 
Longfellow  letter,"  said  he.  "You  can  imagine  my 
chagrin  when  I  received  their  'Respectfully  Declined.' ' 

The  first  letter  to  Longfellow  was  a  legitimate  per 
formance,  but  the  second,  in  Riley's  own  words,  "was 
unwarranted  and  inexcusable.  I  made  the  mistake 
most  writers  make;  having  received  a  good  letter,  I 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     325 

must,  forsooth,  have  another.  They  say  Longfellow 
was  grim  when  they  came  to  steal  his  time.  Grim? 
When  maidens  came  with  their  manuscripts  in  blue 
velvet,  and  young  men  with  carpetbags  full  of  poems, 
he  should  have  frowned  till  they  heard  Thor  hurling 
thunder!" 

Riley  never  could  be  quite  penitent  enough — when  he 
grew  older  and  realized  what  the  infliction  meant — for 
having  been  so  stupid  as  to  send  another  carpetbagf  ul. 
To  enclose  "The  Iron  Horse"  and  one  or  two  other 
short  poems  would  not  have  been  so  bad,  but  with  them 
to  send  "A  Remarkable  Man,"  "Tale  of  a  Spider,"  and 
"Flying  Islands  of  the  Night,"  was  a  Grub-Street 
offense  for  which  there  was  no  pardon.  Nevertheless, 
he  sent  them,  although,  as  he  said,  "two  years  elapsed 
before  I  was  stupid  enough  to  do  it."  The  following 
letter  accompanied  them,  which  received  a  prompt 
answer : 

Greenfield,  Ind.,  Sept.  2,  1878. 
Henry  W.  Longfellow — 

Dear  Sir :  Emboldened  by  a  very  kind  and  encourag 
ing  letter  received  from  you  some  two  years  since,  I 
take  the  liberty  of  enclosing  to  you  some  of  my  later 
work.  And  I  desire  again  to  express  to  you  my  warm 
est  thanks  for  the  great  good  both  your  influence  and 
kind  words  have  done  me.  While  I  have  not  been 
recognized  by  the  magazines,  I  have  a  reputation  in  my 
own  state  of  which  I  am  proud,  and  through  it  I  am  not 
only  making  progress  but  money  as  well. 

The  poetical  drama  I  enclose,  as  you  will  see,  is  with 
out  ambition,  yet  for  all  that  I  most  certainly  trust  you 
will  find  in  it  something  pleasurable.  Regretting  to 
afflict  you  with  the  additional  trouble  of  returning  the 
scraps,  I  am 

Most  Truly  and  Gratefully  yours, 

J.  W.  RILEY. 


326  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Cambridge,  Sept.  5,  1878. 

My  Dear  Sir : 

I  have  received  the  poems  you  were  kind  enough  to 
send  me,  and  have  read  the  lyric  pieces  with  much 
pleasure. 

"The  Flying  Islands  of  the  Night"  I  have  not  yet 
read,  being  very  busy  just  now  with  many  things.  As 
you  say  I  may  keep  it,  I  will  do  so,  and  read  it  care 
fully  at  some  favorable  moment. 

The  other  poems  I  return  as  you  desire,  and  am,  my 
Dear  Sir,  ..  Yours  very  truly, 

HENRY  W.  LONGFELLOW. 

P.  S. — Among  these  poems  the  one  that  pleased  me 
much  as  any,  if  not  more  than  any,  was  "The  Iron 
Horse." 

The  letter  that  could  prompt  the  beautiful  sonnet  to 
Longfellow  was  not  a  mistake  after  all.  One  still  hears 
the  trees  whispering  to  him  and  the  winds  talking  with 
him  confidingly: 

"His  verse  blooms  like  a  flower,  night  and  day; 
Bees  cluster  round  his  rhymes ;  and  twitterings 
Of  lark  and  swallow,  in  an  endless  May 
Are  mingling  with  the  tender  songs  he  sings." 

What  effect  Riley's  letters  and  poems  had  on  Long 
fellow  is  largely  conjecture.  Reviewers  have  thought 
his  "Possibilities"  was  the  result.  It  may  be  true,  for 
it  is  a  matter  of  record  that  the  sonnet  was  written  in 
1882,  after  Riley's  call  at  the  Craigie  House  in  January 
of  that  year.  "Come  into  my  study,"  said  the  poet, 
"it  is  more  like  freedom  here;  we  can  talk  and  be 
content."  At  his  request  Riley  read  "Old  Fashioned 
Roses."  "Delightful !  delightful !"  repeated  Longfellow. 
They  talked  of  "our  native  poets  and  their  work." 
Longfellow  knew  them  all  and  "loved  them  all — even 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     327 

the  humblest."  They  talked  particularly  of  "western 
characteristics  and  dialects  and  the  possibilities  of  the 
West  for  song." 

"Where  are  the  Poets?"  asks  Longfellow  in  the  son 
net; 

"Perhaps  there  lives  some  dreamy  boy,  untaught 
In  schools,  some  graduate  of  the  field  or  street, 
Who  shall  become  a  master  of  the  art, 
An  admiral  sailing  the  high  seas  of  thought, 
Fearless  and  first,  and  steering  with  his  fleet 
For  lands  not  yet  laid  down  in  any  chart." 

Riley  never  claimed  to  be  an  admiral  sailing  the 
high  seas,  but  he  was  untaught  of  the  schools.  Without 
any  chart  he  steered  fearless  and  first  into  a  new  field 
of  song.  The  whole  of  twenty  years,  beginning  with 
the  year  of  his  vision,  was  a  constant  fight  with  the 
critics  for  the  rights  and  merits  of  that  field. 

Letters  from  celebrities,  with  one  exception,  made  lit 
tle  impression  on  him.  No  answer  came  from  Whit- 
tier,  but  that  disappointment  was  soon  softened  by  the 
sympathy  of  Trowbridge.  "Sympathizingly  Yours" 
stayed  with  him  to  the  year  of  his  departure  (1916) 
and  Trowbridge  with  his  four  score  and  ten  years 
was  permitted  to  see  the  dawn  of  the  same  year. 

Arlington,  Mass.,  Dec.  1,  1876. 
Mr.  J.  W.  Riley, 

Dear  Sir:  I  recognize  touches  here  and  there  in 
these  little  pieces,  which  indicate  a  good  deal  of  fancy 
&  sympathy — prime  requisites  in  the  writing  of  verse ; 
but  neither  of  them  seems  to  have  that  original  force 
necessary  to  conceive  &  complete  a  really  striking  poem. 
This  may  be  in  you  yet,  though  your  26  years  may  not 
have  enabled  you — so  far — to  master  it.  With  what 
talent  these  pieces  show,  you  may  undoubtedly  write 


328  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

pleasing  and  perhaps  popular  pieces;  but  to  be  mar 
ketable  &  to  make  its  mark,  poetry  must  nowadays  be 
in  some  respect  striking. 
I  am  Sympathizingly  Yours, 

J.  T.  TROWBRIDGE. 

Trowbridge  as  "Paul  Creyton"  with  his  popular  tales 
for  the  young,  had  caught  the  attention  of  Greenfield 
several  years  prior  to  his  letter  to  Riley.  As  editor  of 
Our  Young  Folks,  he  drew  Riley's  attention  to  the  lit 
erary  significance  of  the  Child-World.  Longfellow  had 
given  but  a  hint  of  its  riches.  There  was  a  call  for 
some  one  to  take  up  the  theme  where  he  left  it.  Some 
one  should  try  his  genius  on  childhood.  Children  should 
lisp  and  whisper  their  messages  to  us,  tell  us 

"What  the  birds  and  the  winds  are  singing 
In  their  sunny  atmosphere." 

Trowbridge  had  also  set  Riley  reflecting  on  the  im 
portance  of  frontier  material  for  poetry.  Some  one, 
Trowbridge  thought,  should  seek  it  in  the  Backwoods 
Enchanted,  go  back  among  old  armchairs,  old-fash 
ioned  spinning-wheels  and  dismantled  looms,  search 
among  dusty  cobwebs,  find 

"Far  under  the  eaves,  the  bunch  of  sage, 
The  satchel  hung  on  its  nail,  amid 
The  heirlooms  of  a  bygone  age." 

But  let  him  beware!  "Facts  are  facts,"  said  Trow 
bridge,  "but  if  not  clothed  with  grace  and  the  warm  tis 
sues  of  human  sympathy,  they  are  no  more  the  truth 
than  a  skeleton  is  a  living  body." 

The  first  to  direct  Riley's  attention  to  the  wonderland 
of  poetry  in  his  immediate  surroundings  was  his 
schoolmaster,  Lee  0.  Harris.  Trowbridge  was  the 
second.  There  was  a  third. 


LIGHT  AND  COUNSEL  FROM  THE  WISE     329 

One  afternoon  in  October,  1876,  while  Riley  was 
aglow  with  the  vision  of  his  mission,  there  came  to 
Greenfield  a  man  who  as  an  orator  had  few  peers  in 
his  generation,  Robert  G.  Ingersoll.  His  speech — a 
political  one  in  the  heat  of  a  national  campaign — 
was  embellished  with  poems  in  prose,  which  seemed 
to  Riley  the  gift  of  the  gods.  He  listened  for 
two  hours  to  eloquence  that  remained  golden  in  mem 
ory  for  forty  years.  Extolling  the  splendor  of  the  new 
day,  the  orator  said :  "Nothing  is  more  marvelous  than 
the  common  everyday  facts  of  everyday  life.  The  age 
of  wonders  is  not  in  the  past.  There  are  millions  of 
miracles  under  our  feet.  In  the  lives  of  the  people,  here 
and  now,  are  all  the  comedy  and  tragedy  they  can  com 
prehend."  Before  closing,  the  orator  touched  upon 
another  important  fact :  that  the  luster  of  noble  quali 
ties  shines  alike  in  the  plainest  workman  and  the  most 
accomplished  gentleman.  Indeed  it  had  shone  under 
a  rough  exterior  and  had  been  wanting  in  the  polished 
scholar.  The  hairy,  unsocial  savage  who  knew  how  to 
get  things  done,  and  got  them  done,  was  a  better  serv 
ant  of  his  country  than  one  who,  without  the  positive 
qualification,  happened  to  be  intellectually  eminent. 

It  was  a  center  shot ;  it  went  straight  to  Riley's  heart. 
Scales  fell  from  his  eyes.  He  saw  his  field.  Better  yet, 
he  saw  as  never  before  the  glory  of  the  imperfect  and 
the  commonplace.  He  attached  greater  value  to  his 
surroundings.  Referring  to  the  orator  he  said,  bor 
rowing  the  familiar  lines, 

"I  know  not  what  this  man  may  be, 
Sinner  or  saint;  but  as  for  me, 
One  thing  I  know,  that  I  am  he 
Who  once  was  blind  and  now  I  see !" 

That  day  he  saw  what  his  friend  John  Burroughs 


330  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

wrote  at  a  later  period,  that  the  lure  of  the  distant  is 
deceptive ;  that  the  great  opportunity  is  where  we  are : 
"Every  place  is  under  the  stars,  every  place  is  the 
centre  of  the  world" — his  native  town  with  its  neigh 
boring  county-seats,  Anderson,  Newcastle,  Rushville, 
Shelbyville  and  Indianapolis,  encircled  a  kingdom  large 
enough  for  the  exercise  of  his  powers.  That  contracted 
circle  was  also  wide  enough  for  a  degree  of  rapture  he 
never  experienced  in  the  heyday  of  fame.  Yearning 
for  the  hilltops  glorified,  "lacking  everything  save 
faith  and  a  great  purpose,"  he  was  in  a  hundred  ways 
happier  than  he  was  in  later  years,  when  success  show 
ered  upon  him  applause  and  gold. 

It  is  a  literal  fact  that  within  a  radius  of  forty  miles 
of  Greenfield,  Riley  found  all  the  material  for  his  poems. 
What  he  found  outside  the  circle  was  accidental  and 
had  its  counterpart  within  it.  Here  were  all  the  com 
edy  and  tragedy  of  human  life ;  here  a  million  miracles 
under  his  feet ;  here  the  center  of  the  world.  Since  he 
touched  the  heartstrings  in  his  own  community,  since 
the  history  of  the  nation  is  the  history  of  communities 
written  large,  and  since  human  nature  is  the  same  the 
world  over,  his  songs  were  destined  to  be  universally 
loved. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT 

ONCE  more  the  lights  of  his  native  streets  had 
become  feeble  tapers — once  more  the  Argonaut 
sought  his  fortune  in  Anderson — not  on  the 
"Buckeye,"  but  on  a  county  paper. 

"Beneath  the  lamplight's  scorching  shade, 
With  eyes  all  wild,  and  lips  all  pale, 
He  courts  the  Muse.    Read  from  his  pen, — 
THE  DEMOCRAT.    This  tells  the  tale." 

His  purse-strings  were  contracted  and  Greenfield 
could  not  relax  them.  "Why  an  appetite,"  he  quiz 
zically  asked ;  "what  is  the  good  of  cutting  your  wisdom 
teeth  when  there  is  nothing  to  eat  in  the  house  but  a 
butcher's  bill  and  a  dun  for  rent?" 

The  yearning  of  this  man  for  freedom  from  the  bond 
age  of  debt  is  one  of  the  many  pathetic  phases  of  his 
existence.  Other  artists,  the  "British  Book"  said, 
painted  to  live,  but  John  Opie  lived  to  paint,  and  that 
was  identically  the  relation  Riley  desired  to  sustain  to 
poetry — not  to  write  poems  to  live,  but  live  to  write 
poems. 

Perhaps,  after  all,  the  bitter  experience  was  the  way 
of  Destiny  to  bruise  his  heart,  that  its  door  of  sympathy 
might  be  always  open  to  the  need  and  distress  of  the 
world.  He  never  sought  money  for  ignoble  ends,  never 
bowed  the  knee  before  it  as  a  worshipper,  but  he  craved 
it  for  personal  benefit  that  he  might  thereby  do  a  work 
of  universal  benefit.  At  Greenfield  and  for  years  after 

331 


332  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

he  moved  to  the  city,  Riley  often  talked  to  friends  in 
the  guise  of  the  light-hearted  Skimpole,  overwhelming 
them  with  money — "in  his  expansive  intentions." 
"He  had  no  more  idea  of  wages  than  a  bluebird," 
said  his  friend  Reed.  "Money  was  a  mystery."  It 
had  the  color  of  magic.  In  the  folk  tales,  the  caps  of 
fairies  and  musicians  were  red — and  gold  was  red. 
As  late  as  the  year  of  his  first  book  (1883),  he  sighs 
for  the  "red  ruddocks."  "You  must  not  forget,"  he 
wrote  his  friend  Parker,  "that  in  the  pecuniary  aspect 
I  present  the  picturesque  outlines  of  the  typical  poet — 
merry,  at  times,  thank  God,  as  Chispa  describes  the 
Serenaders  who  enjoy  hunger  by  day  and  noise  by 
night."  There  were  gloomy  days — but  never  a 
moment  for  surrender.  "Merry,"  he  sometimes 
repeated  when  at  work,  "merry  as  old  Skimpole." 
Creditors  "might  pluck  his  feathers  now  and  then,  and 
clip  his  wings,  but  all  the  same  he  would  work  and 
sing."  "Afterwhile,"  he  merrily  wrote  another  friend, 

"Afterwhile — the  poet-man 
Will  do  better  when  he  can — 
Afterwhile,  with  deep  regrets, 
He  will  even  pay  his  debts; 
And  by  drayload,  cart  and  hack, 
Will  take  borrowed  volumes  back, 
And  will  gibber,  shriek  and  smile — 
When  he  brings  'em — afterwhile !" 

There  were  occasions  at  night  however  when  he  was 
really  blue,  when  he  had  to  sing  himself  to  sleep  with 
some  such  "rhythmical  tumult"  as, 

"I  am  weary  of  waiting,  and  weary  of  tears, 
And  my  heart  wearies,  too,  all  these  desolate  years, 
Moaning  over  the  one  only  song  that  it  knows-, — 
The  little  red  ribbon,  the  ring  and  the  rose." 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      333 

Prior  to  employment  on  the  Anderson  Democrat,  he 
made  several  fruitless  attempts  to  secure  a  place  in 
some  editorial  room.  Painting  signs  was  not  the  only 
way  to  make  a  living.  "I  had  once,"  he  writes  Parker 
of  the  Newcastle  Mercury,  late  in  1876,  "a  few  weeks' 
experience  as  the  local  editor  of  our  little  paper.  I 
liked  it  better  than  anything  I  ever  tried  to  do,  and  I 
write  to  say  that  I  would  like  to  be  with  you  in  that 
capacity.  I  would  be  willing  and  glad  to  work  for 
whatever  you  were  able  to  pay  for  such  help,  if  help  is 
desired.  Please  revolve  it  around  your  brain  a  time  or 
two  and  tell  me  your  conclusion."  It  turned  out  that 
the  Mercury  was  "a  bankrupt  organ  without  a  copper 
for  contributors." 

"The  long  winter  months,  and  the  glare  of  the  snows, 
With  never  a  glimmer  of  sun  in  the  skies," 

wore  on  to  the  following  "WORD"  in  the  Democrat-^ 
the  last  week  in  April,  1877 : 

It  is  our  endeavor  to  serve  the  best  interests  of  our 
patrons,  and  with  this  in  view,  we  have  secured  the 
services  of  Mr.  J.  W.  Riley,  who  has  attained  quite  a 
reputation  as  a  poet  and  writer.  His  productions  have 
already  attracted  the  attention  of  such  men  as  Long 
fellow,  Whittier,  Trowbridge  and  many  other  notables ; 
and  being  convinced  of  the  high  order  of  the  talent  he 
possesses  in  that  direction,  we  believe  we  not  only 
benefit  ourselves  and  patrons  by  the  acquisition  of  his 
services,  *but  that  he  is  also  supplied  with  a  congenial 
position,  and  one  in  which  he  will  develop  the  highest 
attributes  of  his  nature.  Feeling  that  we  already  have 
the  hearty  endorsement  of  a  kindly  public,  we  leave  Mr. 
Riley  to  close  the  homily. 

TODISMAN  &  GROAN  (Proprietors). 


334  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

In  making  my  salam  to  the  Anderson  public,  I  desire 
first  to  extend  my  warmest  thanks  to  those  who  have 
interested  themselves  in  my  behalf,  and  whose  kindly 
influence  has  assisted  me  to  an  office  I  will  ever  feel  a 
pleasure  in  occupying1.  And  in  the  fulfillment  of  the 
duties  that  devolve  upon  me,  it  shall  be  my  earnest  en 
deavor  to  merit  the  trust  and  confidence  that  has  been 
so  generously  reposed.  That  the  position  is  one  that  is 
fraught  with  a  thousand  trials  and  vexations,  shall  not 
deter  me  from  the  steadfast  purpose  of  right  and  jus 
tice  ;  and  while  I  shall  at  times  exercise  the  lighter  attri 
butes  which  go  to  make  up  the  interest  of  a  weekly,  it 
shall  be  my  care  as  well,  to  weed  away  all  petty  slurs 
that  choke  the  growth  of  dignity,  and  in  fact,  to  nurture 
jealously  the  character  of  the  paper,  and  assist  in  my 
humble  way  in  giving  to  its  individuality  the  stamp 
which  "bears  without  abuse  the  grand  old  name  of  gen 
tleman."  Trusting  the  kindly  indulgence  of  the  public 
for  any  discrepancy  of  inexperience,  I  am, 

Yours  truly, 

J.  W.  RILEY. 

There  were  doubtless  many  cups  of  happiness  in  An 
derson,  but  none  quite  so  full  as  that  which  Riley  held 
when  he  entered  the  Democrat  office.  For  the  first 
time  in  his  life  he  was  under  contract  at  a  regular  sal 
ary — forty  dollars  a  month.  When  at  the  end  of  the 
first  month,  the  circulation  was  doubled  and  his  salary 
raised  to  sixty,  his  cup  ran  over.  That  was  unmistak 
able  testimony  to  the  merit  of  the  "acquisition."  (The 
"thousand  trials  and  vexations"  had  not  yet  arrived.) 
There  came  also  exchanges  with  their  compliments. 
"One  of  the  best  writers  among  the  young  litterateurs 
of  the  west,"  said  the  Indianapolis  Herald.  "A  good 
thing  for  the  Democrat,"  said  the  Newcastle  Mercury. 
The  Earlhamite,  which  had  given  wings  to  his  poem, 
"Fame,"  sent  its  best  wishes  and  hoped  "he  would  find 
many  roses  in  the  pathway  of  life."  "Our  rising  Indiana 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      335 

poet,"  said  the  Richmond  Independent,  "hails  us  from 
the  tripod  of  the  Anderson  Democrat,  a  newsy,  bright- 
faced  paper,  which  will  grow  under  the  spell  of  his  ver 
satile  genius.  A  capital,  illustrated  burlesque,  'Maud 
Muller/  adorns  the  first  page,  the  artistic  and  poetical 
production  of  the  new  aspirant  to  editorial  honors." 

The  merriment  "Maud  Muller"  created  was  consid 
erable.  There  was  a  ripple  among  the  exchanges  when 

"The  sweet  girl  stood  in  the  sun  that  day, 
And  raked  the  Judge  instead  of  the  hay." 

And  a  ripple  was  all  Riley  intended.  "It  was  a  mere 
bagatelle,"  he  said.  That  any  one  should  consider  it  a 
poetical  production  was  to  "steep  his  mirth  in  chagrin." 
The  original  "Maud  Muller"  had  been  dramatized  and 
Whittier  had  "utterly  disowned  her,"  which  fact  sug 
gested  the  little  diversion  at  the  Quaker  Poet's  expense. 

Very  soon  the  man  beneath  the  lamplight's  scorching 
shade  was  known  around  town  as  the  "Perspiring 
Poet."  And  truly  the  work  he  accomplished  from  April 
to  September,  1877,  was  extraordinary.  He  was  liter 
ally  an  eagle-eyed  Argus,  meditating,  playing,  working, 
and  perspiring  by  day  and  by  night  on  his  weekly 
tripod.  If  there  was  anything  in  Anderson  or  Madison 
County  that  escaped  his  telescopic  or  microscopic  vi 
sion,  his  fellow  citizens  failed  to  find  it. 

Among  the  manifold  things  he  did  was  to  "embellish 
the  news."  Trowbridge's  counsel  bore  fruit  from  the 
first.  The  bare  facts  sent  in  from  Kill  Buck,  Poliwag, 
and  Weasel  Prairie,  were  not  the  truth  till  clothed  with 
his  sparkling  humor.  Country  correspondents  scarcely 
recognized  their  prosy  items,  after  they  had  passed 
through  the  Democrat's  "humorous  mill."  They  read 
them  with  inconceivable  surprise  and  glee. 


336  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Brightwood,  for  example,  was  "the  little  station 
down  the  Bee  Line  that  did  not  possess  enough  dignity 
to  stop  a  train." 

A  carpenter,  shingling  a  barn  at  Prosperity,  "slipped 
from  the  roof  and  shot  over  the  eaves  like  a  bull-frog." 

Captain  Doxey's  "mocking  bird"  was  a  "twittering 
pilgrim,  and  when  properly  wound  up  played  three 
tunes;  but  the  ratchet  slipped  occasionally  and  'Cap 
tain  Jinks'  and  'Molly  Darling'  flew  into  each  other 
with  a  vehemence  that  was  blood-curdling." 

"Our  Editor  is  running  round  the  country  like  a 
water-bug,  and  a  perfect  nebula  of  new  subscribers  be 
spangles  our  subscription  list; 

The  lark  is  up  to  meet  the  sun, 

The  bee  is  on  the  wing; 
The  Democrat  it  has  begun 

To  go  like  everything." 

A  team  ran  away  at  Perkinsville.  "The  horses  got 
down  to  their  work  and  for  a  time 

'Beneath  their  spurning  feet  the  road 
Like  an  arrowy  Alpine  river  flowed.' ' 

"While  with  joy  akin  to  rapture  we  cluster  round  the 
glowing  grate  and  settle  comfortably  to  the  entrancing 
task  of  our  'Ode  to  May,'  let  us  not  forget  the  anguish 
of  our  unfortunate  neighbor  as  he  buries  himself  in  the 
bleak  and  barren  basement  of  his  heart  and  wonders 
bitterly  what  his  fussy  old  consort  meant  by  having  him 
take  down  the  sitting  room  stove  so  soon." 

"If  the  young  man  who  sends  us  the  poetry  begin 
ning  'How  beautiful  iz  the  birds'  will  bring  us  the 
address  of  his  parents,  we  will  see  that  his  remains 
reach  home  in  safety." 

The  sweet  Goddess  of  Spring  had  been  coquetting, 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      337 

but  now  "she  has  unrolled  her  emerald  carpet  over  the 
world ;  thrown  to  the  winds  her  leafy  banners ;  touched 
with  her  mystic  wand  the  folded  bud,  and  wooed  it  into 
bloom.  She  has  scattered,  too,  with  lavish  hand  the 
feathered  seeds  of  song  and  called  to  life  the  glad  voice 
of  the  brook;  the  sunshine  is  a  gleaming  smile  of  gold 
throughout  the  day;  and  in  the  night,  whose  strange 
weird  beauty  awes  us  like  a  gipsy  maiden's  eyes,  the 
ebon  back  of  the  Thomas  cat  is  arched,  and  his  quiver 
ing  tail  points  to  the  solemn  stars." 

These  and  scores  of  other  items  equally  humorous, 
accompany  the  following  lines  that  appeared  in  his 
"invocation"  column  to  the  business  public — 

"Come  to  the  sanctum  board  to-night, 
And  friendship  there  will  be  your  gain, — 
For  where  the  Democrat  is  found 
No  sorrow  can  remain." 

There  was  a  passage  in  the  Life  of  the  "Cornish  Won 
der,"  John  Opie,  that  appealed  to  Riley  with  special  sig 
nificance.  According  to  Opie,  he  who  wishes  to  be  a 
painter  must  not  overlook  any  kind  of  knowledge,  and, 
as  Riley  saw  it,  the  law  is  the  same  for  the  poet. 

On  entering  the  Democrat  office,  he  immediately  put 
"the  painter's  injunction"  into  practice.  Wide-awake 
as  a  lamp-lighter  he  went  down  the  streets  and  up  the 
alleys,  through  the  highways  and  byways  for  materials. 
Nor  did  he  have  to  stare  at  things  to  know  what  and 
where  they  were.  It  was  current  opinion  that  "he 
could  look  down  the  shelves  of  a  hardware  store  and 
see  at  a  glance  everything  on  them."  In  June  the 
Democrat  began  to  mass  materials.  For  weeks  it 
harped  on  "practical  things" — three  to  five  columns  an 
issue.  It  made  its  bow  in — 


SSS  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

AN  IDYL  OF  TO-DAY 

The  Blunt  Blade  of  Business 
Ground  to  an  Ethereal  Edge. 


OUR  POET  AT  THE  CRANK 

Motto :   "Grind  till  the  last  armed  foe  expires." 


INVOCATION 

0  Courteous  Muse,  you  have  served  me  so  long 
As  guide  through  the  devious  highways  of  song ; 
And  ever  have  led  me  with  willingest  hand 
Adown  the  dim  aisles  of  that  fanciful  land, 
Where  even  Aladdin — the  luckiest  scamp 

That  ever  was  spared  by  a  kerosene  lamp — 

Not  happier  was  or  more  burdened  with  bliss 

Than  the  poor,  impecunious  writer  of  this. 

And  as  I  recall  with  rapturous  thrill 

The  ripe  fruits  of  rhyme  which  I  gathered  at  will — 

The  lush,  juicy  clusters  on  Poesy's  tree 

That  weighed  down  the  limbs  to  accommodate  me, — 

The  jet  of  my  thanks  flashes  into  a  blaze 

That  will  brighten  my  life  all  the  rest  of  my  days. 

And  so,  as  the  gas  glimmers  over  my  brow 

And  gleams  on  the  pencil  I'm  writing  with  now — 

And  glances  from  that  with  a  jocular  flash 

To  redden  my  already  ruddy  mustache ; — 

1  can  but  give  over  all  yearnings  for  fame, 
To  write  a  few  lines  with  the  singular  aim 
Of  pleasing  the  world  with  an  idyl  that  rings 
The  music  of  business  and  practical  things. 

It  was  a  bid  for  business  to  open  its  alcoves  for  the 
poet's  inspection.  "There  is  no  cessation  of  the  ardu 
ous  labors  of  my  position,"  he  wrote  his  Schoolmaster 
in  July,  "and  I  am  grateful  for  it,  for  I  think  the  news 
paper  school  an  excellent  one  and  filled  with  most  valu 
able  experience.  I  am  still  at  the  crank,  but  even  with 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      339 

that  I  have  daily  acquired  some  new  proficiency.  I 
have  written  many  poems  that  I  have  laid  away — the 
kind  I  publish  are  only  intended  for  the  casual  reader, 
as  you  know.  The  better  ones  I  reserve  for  better  dis 
tinction." 

The  casual  reader  saw  such  "literary  atrocities"  as 
"Craqueodoom"  and  "Wrangdillion,"  such  inferior 
fruits  of  labor  as  "The  Frog,"  which  he  termed  his 
batrachian  idyl,  "A  Man  of  Many  Parts,"  "A  Test  of 
Love,"  "George  Mullen's  Confession,"  "Wash  Lowry's 
Reminiscence"  and  "Now  We  Can  Sleep,  Mother,"  the 
latter  a  parody  on  the  old  familiar  "Rock  Me  To  Sleep," 
celebrating  the  expiration  of  the  sewing  machine  pat 
ent.  The  drudgery  of  millions  of  poor  women  was  at 
an  end.  "Broken  was  the  sewing  machine  monopoly — 
snapped  the  last  thread  of  tyranny  that  bound  a  starv 
ing  people  hand  and  foot ; 

"Backward,  throw  backward  the  curtain  to-night, 
Open  the  window  and  let  the  glad  light 
Of  the  round  moon  shimmer  over  the  scene 
Where  we  at  last  own  a  sewing  machine." 

The  casual  reader  also  saw,  and  muddled  his  wits 
with  such  incoherent  prose  effusions  as  "The  Duck 
Creek  Jabberwock,"  "Unawangawawa ;  or  The  Eyelash 
of  the  Lightning,"  "Trillpipe's  Boy  on  Spiders,"  and 
"The  Anderson  Mystery," — the  first,  the  story  of  "a 
strange  animal  of  the  basket-backed  species  in  a  neck 
of  the  woods  where  they  never  read  the  Bible  or  take 
the  Democrat";  the  last,  the  tale  of  a  Healthy  Ghost, 
"facts  without  fancy  about  a  mysterious  lodger  that 
sheltered  its  goblin  head"  within  the  walls  of  a  haunted 
house,  some  such  mystery  as  the  echoes  of  footsteps  on 
the  Ghost's  Walk  when  the  dusky  wings  of  solitude  sat 


340  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

brooding  upon  Chesney  Wold.  The  "Perspiring  Poet" 
had  searched  the  house  "from  turret  to  foundation 
stone,  gone  through  the  floor  like  the  genii  in  some  en 
chanted  palace,  had  peeped  under  the  sleepers  and 
emerged  in  a  coil  of  cobwebs  with  the  unfathomable 
mystery — and  hoped  the  day  would  soon  dawn  when  he 
could  give  his  readers  a  full  biography  of  the  ghostly 
visitor,  with  pen-portrait,  including  stature,  weight, 
color  of  eyes  and  hair." 

The  "Jingling  Editor"  began  his  "idyl  on  business" 
with  a  curtsy  to  the  main-floor  room  under  his  office, 
where  the  clangor  of  iron-ware  contrasted  painfully 
with  the  silence  he  craved  when  the  Muse  was  indul 
gent: 

"Here  on  the  balcony,  a  sign 
Somewhat  marred  by  the  rain  and  the  shine 
Of  a  dozen  years,  still  checks  the  stare 
Of  the  passer-by  with  the  word  'Hardware !' 
While  a  portly  man  in  the  door  below — 
Making  the  sign  more  apropos — 
Stands,  in  a  loosely-fitting  sack, 
With  his  legs  wide  out  and  his  hat  set  back, 
But  an  open  face  and  a  genial  air 
Shows  that  his  heart  is  a  softer  ware 
Than  the  goods  he  keeps  in  the  store-room  there. 
Stretching  along  on  either  side 
Of  the  walls  of  the  warehouse  long  and  wide, 
The  shelving  sags  with  the  heavy  weight 
Of  hinges,  hoes,  and  the  chains  that  grate 
Their  tinkling  links  on  the  gleaming  blades 
Of  the  scythes  below,  and  the  rakes  and  spades ; 
And  the  thousand  nameless  instruments 
That  the  tireless  mind  of  man  invents 
For  the  tradesman's  use,  or  the  farmer's  hand, 
Or  the  sportman's  need,  or  the  smith's  demand ; 
Till  even  the  eye  as  it  looks  on  these — 
Dazzled  is  it  with  the  sight  it  sees." 


HENRY  WADSWOKTH  LONGFELLOW 
1868 


JOHN  TOWNSEND  TROWBRIDGE 
From  a  photograph  taken  in  1872 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      341 

"The  huge  appetite  of  the  public  for  wonders  re 
quires  daily  food."  "The  Poet  at  the  Crank"  knew  it — 
and  supplied  the  demand  in  cargoes.  No  weekly  editor 
reached  the  rural  districts  as  did  Riley.  Farmers  called 
to  see  him.  They  came  with  their  families — and 
brought  gifts  from  their  gardens  and  orchards.  Bou 
quets  "blossomed  on  his  table  while  their  fragrance 
hovered  on  odorous  wings  about  the  dusty  crannies  of 
his  office."  Once  when  the  street  in  front  of  his  bal 
cony  was  congested  with  wagons  that  had  brought 
families  with  their  applause  from  the  country,  he  was 
reminded  of  huzzas  for  the  "Cornish  Wonder."  "These 
coaches  of  nobility,"  he  jestingly  observed,  "are  be 
come  a  nuisance  to  the  neighborhood." 

The  keynote  of  his  success  lay  in  this,  the  establish 
ment  of  a  friendly  relation  between  town  and  country 
— and  he  was  about  the  first  man  in  America  to  do  it. 
"Without  the  farmer,"  he  said,  "the  town  can  not  flour 
ish.  Ye  men  of  the  streets,  be  cordial  to  our  rustic 
brethren.  They  are  more  potent  than  bankers  and  law 
yers,  more  essential  to  the  public  good  than  poets  and 
politicians.  Do  all  you  can  for  them.  Farmers  should 
vibrate  wisely  and  heartily  between  the  Public  Square 
and  the  farm — and  we  of  the  town  should  do  the  same. 
The  golden  mean  escapes  the  plagues  that  haunt  the 
extremes. 

Could  I  pour  out  the  nectar  the  gods  only  can, 

I  would  fill  up  my  glass  to  the  brim 

And  drink  the  success  of  the  Suburban  Man." 

Said  a  matronly  mother,  the  idol  of  a  happy  family, 
"The  poet  just  threw  his  arms  around  our  county  and 
took  it  to  see  the  sights.  He  regaled  us  with  the  wit 
that  had  been  the  talk  of  his  sign-painting.  Such 


342  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

cleverness  in  versifying,  our  town  had  never  known." 
"The  mock  seriousness,"  says  a  writer,  "with  which 
he  took  himself  and  the  Democrat  made  it  for  a  time 
a  more  welcome  sheet  in  Anderson  than  would  have 
been  a  comic  almanac." 

"Dear  ever  indulgent  and  generous  Muse, 
You  may  give  me  occasional  lifts  if  you  choose — 
If  not  I  shall  stagger  along  all  the  same, 
And  so,  if  I  falter,  why,  yours  is  the  blame." 

Down  the  streets  and  up  the  lanes  he  went  with  the 
public  in  his  "Rhyme  Wagon" — and  the  magical  thing 
about  it  was  that  the  public  could  ride  in  it  and  at  the 
same  time  sit  by  the  lamplight  of  home. 

"  'Make  way  for  Liberty !'  (he  said) 
Made  way  for  Liberty,  and  led 
A  grateful  people  on  to  where 
A  ceaseless  clamor  filled  the  air ; 
And  countless  hammers  beat  and  banged 
And  iron  echoes  clanked  and  clanged 
As  if  new  worlds  were  just  begun 
By  workingmen  at  Anderson." 

He  took  the  curious  gaze  of  worldly  eyes  to  the  new 
Machine  Shop  where  the  pulse  of  labor 

"Gilded  bands  and  polished  steel, 
And  strange  machines  whose  works  reveal 
The  master  minds  that  have  resigned 
Their  thoughts  to  benefit  mankind." 

Then  through  "cinder  alley"  to  the  Repair  Shop, 
where  the  off-hand  mare  had  kicked  the  end  gate  out 
of  the  wagon,  splintered  the  single-tree 

"And  sprung  the  tongue,  till — I  declare! — 
'Twas  enough  to  make  a  preacher  swear." 

Then  across  the  railroad  (with  apologies  to  Byron 
and  his  "Waterloo")  to  hear  the  sound  of  ripplery  in 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT       343 

the  Planing  Mill.  There  artisans  had  gathered  in  noisy 
array — ; 

"A  hundred  hearts  beat  happily;  and  when 
Sawdust  arose  with  its  voluptuous  smell. 
Red  eyes  looked  work  to  eyes  as  red  again 
And  all  went  merry  as  a  married  belle. 
But  hush !  hark !  a  deep  sound  strikes  like  a 
rising  knell/' 

Did  ye  not  hear  it?  It  was  not  the  wind,  nor  the  car 
rattling  o'er  the  stony  street.  It  was  the  roar  of  the 
Mill  on  a  rampage  with  the  whistles  that  spilled  dis 
cordant  shrieks  from  their  brazen  throats,  sweet  to  the 
hungry  men  at  twelve  o'clock  as  melody  to  the  heart  of 
a  poet. 

Then  to  the  Retail  District,  where  the  Babel  of  busi 
ness  was  bewildering,  where  clerks  were  caroling  gay 
and 

"The  chorus  ever  echoes  on  and  on, 
And  swells  in  volume  till  the  glee 
Is  wafted  over  land  and  sea." 

To  the  corner  room  of  the  hotel  where  the  jeweler 
blossoms  like  a  Persian  king  in  affluence: 

"Who  but  he 

Could  read  a  watch's  pedigree? 
A  Chieftain  to  the  Highlands  bound, 
Who  missed  the  'Accommodation,' 
Pulled  out  his  watch  and  took  it  round 
To  Shirk  for  reparation. 

And  Shirk  squints  sharply  through  the  glass — 
He  took  a  pair  of  'pinchers/ 
And  raised  a  little  wheel  of  brass 
And  nipped  it  with  his  clinchers, 
And  put  it  back,  and  oiled  the  works, 
And  cleaned  the  graven  border; 
And  watch  and  man  went  out  of  Shirk's 
In  perfect  running  order." 


344  JAMES  WHITCOMB  PJLEY 

Oh,  that  mammoth  stock  of  shoes — gaiters,  carpet 
slippers,  and  red-top  boots  with  copper-tips  for  the 
children ! 

"  'What  boots  it?'  Shakespeare  asks — 
We  answer  Conwell's  Store ; 
For  never  boots  were  better  made, 
Or  sold  as  cheaply  to  the  trade 
In  Anderson  before." 

"And  don't  forget  some  cash  to  pay  the  pedler" — 
scan  those  bright  faces  behind  the  glass  at  the  Citizen's 
Bank, 

"Walk  up  to  the  counter  and  lay  down  a  check, 
And  see  the  cashier  lightly  curving  his  neck 
Evincing  that  he's  not  a  moneyless  wreck." 

Feast  the  eye  on  the  tints  of  fashion,  the  reds,  and 
the  blues  and  modest  hues,  and  the  flowers  that  light 
the  gloom  of  the  millinery  room, 

"Where  the  goods  are  all  new 
And  as  fresh  and  as  pure  as  the  pearliest  dew 
That  jewels  the  jasmine  in  jauntiest  May. 

The  ties  and  cuffs 

And  laces  and  ruffs, 
And  all  the  little  fancy  stuffs 

Are  too  sublime 

For  idle  rhyme 
To  ever  dare  the  heights  to  climb." 

Stop  at  the  Bon  Ton  Shaving  Parlor  where  the  mus 
tache  is  made  as  soft  and  fair  as  silks  of  the  corn  in 
the  summer  air ;  see  the  barber 

"Strop  his  razor  till  it  gleams 
Brighter  than  the  light  that  beams 
From  the  moon  on  winter  snow 
When  the  sleighbells  come  and  go." 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      345 

Up  a  winding  stair — a  lunge  and  a  jerk — a  thump 
and  a  bump — a  rough  road  for  the  "Rhyme  Wagon"  to 
go, — up  to  ring  a  little  bell,  up  to  the  Gallery  "to  see 
the  picture  of  the  man  with  an  album  in  his  hand"; 
and  before  descending,  a  pause  on  the  balcony  in  the 
shade  of  the  catalpa  tree  to  see  if  the  world,  morbid 
and  turbid  in  its  greed  for  pelf,  wears  the  color  of 
romance  it  wore  in  youth : — 

"Twitter  me  something  low  and  sweet, 
Over  the  din  of  the  noisy  street, 
Coax  a  sound  from  the  ivory  keys, 
And  fling  it  out  on  the  fevered  breeze 
Like  a  spray  of  dew  on  a  drooping  flower 
That  blooms  again  at  the  magic  power, — • 
And  the  restless  hearts  that  beat  below 
Perchance  may  dream  of  the  Long  Ago, 
And  sigh  with  a  rapture  of  bliss 
For  an  era  more  refulgent  than  this 
And  feel  again  in  some  sweet  refrain, 
Release  from  the  chafing  strife  for  gain." 

Pegasus  was  on  the  brink  of  a  flight  from  the  bal 
cony  when  the  "blunt  blade  of  business"  re-hitched 
him  to  the  "Rhyme  Wagon"  and  he  descended  to  the 
Corner  Store 

"Just  across  the  street 
Where   foreign  fruits,   and  pineapples 
And  oranges  are  sweet 
And  fresh  as  when  in  Tropic  climes 
They  ripened  in  the  sun, 
And  never  dreamed  of  better  times." 

Farther  down  the  street  to  the  store  where  the 
"Giant  Boot  fills  a  space  on  the  sidewalk  as  large  as 
any  man  in  town" ;  on  to  the  Palace  where  wool-delaines 
and  calicoes  are  kept;  upstairs  again  to  the  Dentist 
where  moans  are  spiced — - 


346  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"With  writhings,  shriek  and  shout 
While  the  shrew  has  her  teeth  jerked  out." 

Down  the  Main  street  again  to  the  Merchant  who  would 
not  advertise,  whose  name,  mysteriously  known  to 
fame,  was  never  seen  in  the  Democrat; 

"And  hence  the  Muse  was  prone  to  balk 
With  sorrow-moistened  eyes, 
And  sigh  to  think  she  could  not  talk 
Of  tact  and  enterprise." 

Across  the  way  to  the  Druggist  who  has  the  "rinktum" 
for  the  stomach  when  Old  Man  Ague  comes  around 
"shaking  hands  with  everybody,  shaking  legs,  and  feet, 
and  toes,  till  his  wracked  and  wretched  victims  long  to 
shake  his  acquaintance." 

See  the  "crowd  of  customers  happy  as  a  circus-band 
come  to  town."  History  sings  of  the  virtues  and 
Verse  carols 

"The  praise  of  the  Grocery  men 
Who  have  built  them  a  notable  name, 
Their  faces  bright  as  Prosperity's  when 
She  toots  on  the  trumpet  of  Fame." 

Then  to  the  Book  Store  for  croquet  sets,  rustic 
brackets,  fancy  paper — and  the  news  and  photographic 
views ;  to  the  Furniture  Store  where  the  farmer  pulled 
out  his  pocketbook  and  bought  his  wife  a  parlor  set ; 

"And  when  she  still  insisted 
That  she  knew  no  end  of  cares, 
His  money  roll  untwisted, 
For  a  set  of  sofa  chairs." 

From  Bacchus  who  crushed  "the  sweet  poison  from 
the  purple  grape"  to  Tennyson  who  spiced  the  ban 
quet  with  "drinking  songs — and  the  dust  of  death," 
poets  have  sung  the  praise  or  blame  of  wine.  And 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      347 

since,  in  a  wild  frenzy,  the  "Crank  was  flaunting  every 
thing  aloft  like  a  flag," — rhyming  of  sulkies,  gristmills, 
mattress  springs,  undertakers,  public  jokes,  the  Public 
Purse,  cigars,  potatoes,  fish  and  fowl,  and  "everything 
the  market  affords  from  East  to  West," — since  it  was 
thus  and  so,  there  slipped  from  his  pen  a  fragment  for 
"the  juice  that  drippeth  from  the  grape." 

"And  now  the  jolly  Muse,  with  rosy  lip 
Bedecked  with  crimson  dew,  must  sing  the  praise 
Of  wines  that  heaven  knows  have  caught  the  fire 
Of  some  forgotten  sun  and  kept  it  through 
A  hundred  years  of  gloom  still  glowing  in 
A  heart  of  ruby." 

There  was  a  rare  assortment — ripe  vintages  of  all  de 
scriptions  :  Old  Port  Rye ;  Kentucky  Bourbon — 

"Liquors  that  so  strangely  lubricate 
The  grooves  of  life  that  all  the  world  slides  by 
Without  a  jar  or  care  of  discontent, — 
Proof  brandies  that  the  doctors  recommend 
In  feverous  times,  when  skeleton  disease, 
In  trailing  robes  of  pestilence  bedight, 
Stalks  grimly  through  the  land,  and  feeds  the  grave 
with  mortals." 

Lest  the  "Crusaders"  protest  too  vehemently,  he 
hastened  the  next  week  to  praise  the  "stream"  that 
eloquently  flowed  from  the  Town  Pump.  Men  might 
draw  the  cork  and  tip  the  decanter — "father  Adam 
might  founder  on  apples"  but  liquor  was  neither  boon 
nor  luxury  in  the  Garden  of  Eden — 

"When  the  heart  like  a  plummet  resounds  in  the  dumps, 
0  hasten  to  Platter  &  Batterall  for  pumps 
That  will  draw  up  the  ale  of  old  Adam,  and  make 
Your  thirsty  soul  happy  for  charity's  sake. 
They  have  all  appliances  ever  ordained 
To  handle  elixirs,  both  dug-for  and  rained: 
So  here's  to  the  pumps  that  will  jerk  up  success 
And  splash  satisfaction  all  over  your  dress." 


348  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"The  way  to  do  a  thing  is  to  do  it" — and  there  is 
another  saying — "Do  the  thing  and  you  shall  have 
the  power."  So  it  was  with  the  "Poet  at  the  Crank." 
He  had  been  a  minstrel,  a  sign-painter,  a  vagabond, 
a  scrub  reporter,  a  "lawyer,"  a  rabid  reader  of  novels 
and  a  clever  imitator  of  old  poets.  There  was  danger 
of  his  becoming  Jack  of  all  trades  and  master  of  none. 
On  entering  the  Democrat  office  that  danger  vanished. 
He  became  "master  of  rhymes."  With  singleness  of 
purpose  he  cherished  the  art  of  making  verse.  He 
made  rhymes  (no  end  of  them  the  mere  shavings 
of  the  shop),  rhymes  of  every  conceivable  kind 
about  every  conceivable  thing — made  them  till  his  task, 
from  the  metrical  side  of  poetry,  was  as  easy  as  for 
winds  to  blow  or  brooks  to  murmur.  Having  mastered 
that,  the  next  and  all-commanding  thing  was  to  foster 
ideas.  Though  he  rhyme  with  the  tongues  of  angels,  if 
he  had  not  ideas  he  were  a  tinkling  cymbal.  To  origi 
nate  ideas  was  not  his  province — they  were  gifts — but 
once  he  had  them,  he  was  to  nourish  and  fondle  them  as 
a  mother  the  new-born  child.  "When  I  neglect  that 
mandate,  may  my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof  of  my 
mouth." 

The  "Jingling  Editor"  especially  endeared  himself 
to  the  public  heart  by  his  abounding  "exercise  of  the 
lighter  attributes  that  go  to  make  up  a  weekly."  Since 

"Kings  sometimes  unbend, 
And  Kings  may  jovial  be," 

said  he,  "the  poet  likewise  may  let  Pegasus  frisk  and 
caper  through  the  fall  oats  of  wit  and  ridicule."  It 
was  said  that  he  could  "coax  more  laughter  out  of  an 
ink  bottle  into  the  Democrat  than  any  two  papers  in 
the  state  could  hold."  "Why  take  the  Danbury  News 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      349 

or  the  Burlington  HawJceye,"  wrote  a  subscriber 
"when  you  can  get  the  Democrat?  The  poor  sigh  to 
read  it."  The  humor  in  his  "sappy  locals"  made  Old 
Sobersides  clap  his  thighs. 

"Local!  Local!  Beware  of  the  day 
When  the  Democrat  snatches  you  out  of  the  way." 

i 

A  farmer  "staggered  into  the  office  yesterday  and 
laid  a  watermelon  big  as  a  barrel  on  our  dissecting 
table." 

The  picnic  at  Blacklidge  Hills,  with  dainties  spread 
on  the  green  grass  "has  moored  itself  away  in  a  golden 
port  of  memory,  and  there  rides  at  anchor  like  a  fairy 
galleon  in  the  harbor  of  our  dreams." 

Glancing  along  the  table  of  a  cheap  boarding  house 
where  "a  dozen  herbivorous  cannibals  were  performing 
on  roast'n-ears  as  if  they  were  so  many  French  harps," 
the  "Crank"  was  thrilled  with  "musical  emotions  a 
buttonwood  orchestra  could  not  produce." 

May  glides  onward  into  June;  "the  price  of  straw 
berries  is  on  the  market ;  each  is  worth  a  watermelon ; 
we  have  saved  our  money  to  pay  off  a  mortgage." 

Last  week  the  new  patent  jail  broke  again — "seven 
prisoners  dripped  out  before  the  hole  was  discovered." 

"Give  us  the  log  jail  with  two  rooms  interfused, 
No  friends  but  the  darkness,  no  windows  to  loot, 
The  old-fashioned  jail  that  our  grandfathers  used." 

The  pump  on  the  east  side  of  the  Square  that  "for 
weeks  has  suffered  from  a  throat  affection,  has  been 
relieved  and  now  wears  a  wind-pipe  second  to  none  in 
the  county." 

The  contents  of  the  street  sprinkler  fell  like  a  bless 
ing  on  the  thirsty  street.  "0  papa,"  said  a  little  girl, 


350  JAMES  WIIITCOMB  PJLEY 

"Her  cheek  against  the  window-pane — 
'Yonder  goes  a  man  a-haulin'  rain/  ' 

To  a  band  of  serenaders:  "Tackle  the  office  again 
and  we  will  give  you  a  local  long  as  the  Moral  Law." 
For  a  band  of  Bulgarians,  however,  the  "Jingling 
Editor"  had  nothing  but  "a  pan  of  hot  pitch:  come 
again  and  we'll  drop  a  harrow  on  you." 

The  weekly  was  humming.  "Last  week  we  counted 
twenty-three  articles  in  an  Exchange  which  had  been 
taken  from  the  Democrat  without  credit.  We  are  con 
sidering  the  propriety  of  sending  out  advanced  sheets 
for  clipping  purposes.  We  printed  six  hundred  extras 
for  our  last  issue  and  fondly  hoped  to  appease  the  pub 
lic  appetite ;  but  as  the  supply  was  ravenously  gobbled 
by  Saturday  noon,  we  made  a  note,  and  will  this  week 
stretch  our  elastic  capacity  to  its  utmost  tension.  The 
Democrat  is  indeed  nutritious." 

The  "Poet  at  the  Crank"  seems  to  have  been  the 
agent  of  prosperity.  In  four  months  the  circulation 
increased  from  four  hundred  to  twenty-four  hundred 
subscribers — a  fact  as  mysterious  to  him  as  the  ma 
neuvers  of  the  Muse.  By  June  business  round  the 
Public  Square  was  "flourishing  in  a  soil  of  industry 
and  enterprise."  Townsmen  and  countrymen  were 
scrambling  on  the  "Rhyme  Wagon" ; 

"On  this  side  and  on  that 
They  grapple  with  success 
Till  smiling  Fortune  pets  them 
With  her  tenderest  caress." 

"We  are  assuming  stately  proportions,"  the  "Crank" 
wrote  the  Schoolmaster;  "we  are  almost  certain  of 
the  highest  journalistic  success.  Yours  always,  Jay 
Whoop." 

In  addition  to  a  shower  of  jingles  for  the  merchants, 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      351 

the  first  week  of  June  the  poet  coaxed  from  his  ink 
bottle  a  breezy  advertising  column  for  the  Democrat: 

THE  ANDERSON  DEMOCRAT 

— is  a — 
Good  Little  Paper 

— and  you — 
Ought  to  be  Kind  to  it! 

•  ••••••• 

It  ain't  "the  best  paper  in  the  State,"  or  if 
it  is,  it  won't  acknowledge  it,  for  it  someway 
feels  that  the  market  is  already  glutted  with 
that  brand.  No,  it  is  simply 

GOOD! 

and  you  ought  to  love  it  as  you  would  a  great, 
fat,  laughing  baby  with  a  bunch  of  jingling 
keys. 

•  *.»•.•••• 

Its  editors  are  all  so  gentle  and  artless! 
Their  features  are  invariably  wreathed  in 
smiles,  and  their  noble  hearts  hammer  away 
at  the  blissful  hours  like  a  sheepskin  band  in 
a  Fourth  o*  July  delegation.  Everybody  seems 
impressed  with  the  editors,  and  their  amiable 
disposition  is  a  perpetual  sermon  for  the  evil- 
disposed. 

•  ••••••• 

The  circulation  of  The  Democrat  is  as  large 

as  any  other  county  paper,  and  is  increasing 
with  a  degree  of  velocity  that  lifts  the  hat  of 
the  oldest  inhabitant. 

•  ••••••• 

The  Democrat  makes  a  specialty  of  news, 

and  has  a  knack  of  securing  more  items  of 
interest  than  it  can  possibly  publish.  In  con 
sequence,  much  of  worth  is  unavoidably  lost  to 
the  public,  to  say  nothing  of  the  thousand 
gems  of  purest  ray  serene  that  hide  their  bril 
liance  in  the  dark,  unfathomed  caves  of  the 
waste  basket. 


352  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

The  Democrat  is  the  farmer's  friend  and 
never  tires  of  telling  him  what  he  already 
knows — throwing  in  occasionally  some  hints 
of  a  simple  device  that  will  keep  rats  from 
climbing  up  the  legs  of  his  corn  crib,  or  a 
recipe  that  will  knock  hog  cholera  higher  than 
Kilgore's  kite.  Our  recipes  for  botts  are  much 
sought  after,  and  are  alone  worth  the  price  of 
subscription. 


The  Democrat's  market  reports  are  always 
lovely.  This  department  is  under  the  manage 
ment  of  a  lightning  calculator.  Occasional 
glimpses  of  the  gifted  gentleman  may  be 
caught  through  the  periphery  of  figures  in 
which  he  is  constantly  enveloped.  He  is  the 
boon  companion  of  the  grain  merchant — the 
confidential  adviser  of  the  stock  buyer,  and 
the  bosom  friend  of  the  butcher,  the  baker 
and  candlestick  maker. 


And  lastly,  The  Democrat  is  full  to  the 
brim  of  the  creamiest  literature  of  the  day, 
and  ever  replete  with  the  soul-searing  utter 
ances — "Hist!  the  blood-hounds  are  on  me 
trail"  and  "  'Twas  but  the  work  of  a  mo 
ment,"  and  so  forth,  and  so  forth.  0,  it's 
bully!  And  poetry!  The  Democrat  keeps  a 
poet  constantly  on  hand  who  writes  anything 
from  Paradise  Lost  down  to  a  candy-kiss 
verse.  Odes,  however,  seem  to  be  his  strong 
est  inclination — in  fact,  he  Ode  so  much  when 
The  Democrat  employed  him,  that  they  had  to 
advance  his  first  month's  salary.  But  he's 
frugal  now  and  can  wear  a  collar  longer  with 
out  turning  than  any  other  of  his  species  in 
the  State. 

SUBSCRIBE  NOW 

AND  MOURN  AT  LEISURE. 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      353 

While  the  Democrat  was  "going  like  everything," 
the  poet  wrote  "Some  Observations  on  Decoration 
Day"  and  printed  his  "Silent  Victors."  This  and 
Henry  Watterson's  address  at  Nashville,  Tennessee, 
the  exchanges  heralded  as  the  chief  "Memorial"  events 
of  the  year.  The  printing  of  "poems  of  mark"  how 
ever  was  exceptional ;  he  was  writing  and  saving  them 
"for  better  distinction." 

The  work  he  did  on  the  Democrat  staggers  imagina 
tion.  What  he  accomplished  on  the  "Rhyme  Wagon," 
conservative  judges  considered  a  full  summer's  work. 
But  that  was  secondary  in  quality  if  not  in  quantity. 
Formerly  his  poetic  effusions  were  concealed  with  a 
few  favorite  books  in  his  "reticule."  When  filled,  its 
contents  were  transferred  to  a  "telescope."  Now  he 
dignified  his  room  with  a  trunk.  Verily  that  trunk 
was  the  "Chinese  Casket,"  save  that  its  contents  did 
not  consist  solely  of  the  best  that  he  wrote.  Its  con 
fusion  and  disorder  were  beyond  belief.  It  contained 
everything  he  wrote — jingle,  normal  English,  doggerel 
and  dialect;  pathos  and  humor,  both  prose  and  verse; 
and  show-bills  and  letters,  and  trinkets  innumerable — 
all  locked  away  in  its  musty  confines,  to  drift  perilously 
about,  in  the  years  to  come,  from  hotel  to  hotel,  from 
attics  to  job  printing  rooms  and  dark  basements  as  the 
Fates  decreed.  No  Chinese  princess  guarded  the  "Cas 
ket"  while  Riley  wrote  for  it — unless  she  did  it  art 
fully  in  the  guise  of  one  of  his  numerous  superstitions : 
namely  that  "he  should  destroy  nothing  he  wrote."  In 
moments  of  inspiration  he  was  aware  of  some  force 
other  than  his  own  guiding  his  pen.  It  was  not  for 
him  in  those  seasons  of  rapture  to  determine  values. 
Save  all,  and  let  the  public  judge. 

The  trunk  contained  the  Golden  Fleece  of  the  seven- 


354  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

ties,  original  manuscripts  of  verse  that  a  decade  later 
first  saw  the  light  in  book  form  in  Neghborly  Poems, 
Afterwhiles,  and  Rhymes  of  Childhood.  Like  the 
Koran,  portions  of  those  books  "were  written  in  frac 
tions  and  flung  pellmell  into  a  casket." 

While  on  the  staff  of  the  Democrat,  Riley's  room — 
"No.  19— North  Main  Street— Up  Stairs— In  the  Rear" 
— like  its  successors  in  Greenfield  and  Indianapolis 
was  little  more  than  a  repository  for  what  he  wrote. 
It  was  his  second  "literary  den."  Callers  commented 
on  its  vacant  appearance,  the  meager  supply  of  furni 
ture,  and  the  absence  of  pictures  on  the  wall.  He  was 
the  "Crank"  in  the  daytime  and  usually  wrote  his 
jingle  in  the  Democrat  office — the  front  room  on  the 
same  floor.  At  night  he  was  the  poet,  and  when  sere- 
naders  came  they  had  to  tackle  the  silence  under  the 
window  in  the  rear. 

Here  in  his  second  "literary  den"  notable  contribu 
tions  to  Child  Literature  had  their  origin.  Here  the 
real  child  received  "a  just  hearing  in  the  world  of 
letters."  Among  the  first  of  the  child  poems  to  appear 
in  the  Democrat  was  "Willie" — not  a  pretentious 
poem,  perhaps  not  intended  by  its  author  as  a  poem 
at  all.  But  it  contained  enough  merit  to  be  revamped 
for  the  first  child  book  (Rhymes  of  Childhood), 
in  which  it  was  entitled  "Prior  to  Miss  Belle's 
Appearance,"  and  when  the  poet  with  such  magical 
effect  began  to  breathe  the  innocence  of  childhood 
across  the  footlights,  "Willie"  was  given  the  last  place 
on  the  program  and  for  a  long  time  retained  that 
distinction  in  his  public  readings.  "That  child-sketch," 
said  his  comrade  Nye,  "makes  him  the  best  entertainer 
in  the  universe." 

In  July  the  "vexations"  began  and  by  the  end  of 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      355 

August  were  hatching  in  such  swarms  that  it  took  a 
lightning  calculator  to  keep  a  record  of  them.  Occa 
sionally  an  exchange  struck  the  "Crank"  between  the 
eyes  with  a  pellet  like  this :  "The  Anderson  Democrat 
complains  that  its  neighbors  are  stealing  its  original 
poetry.  The  man  who  would  steal  Riley's  poetry  (in 
the  language  of  General  Dix)  should  be  shot  on  the 
spot." 

"Complying  with  the  request  of  numerous  citizens," 
the  "Jingling  Editor,"  accompanied  by  his  genial 
friend,  William  M.  Croan  of  the  Democrat,  visited  the 
Poor  Farm  "for  the  purpose  of  determining  the  real 
condition  of  the  institution  that  had  so  long  been  the 
subject  of  unfavorable  comment."  What  the  "Crank" 
said  in  his  editorial,  headed  in  "Over  the  Hills 
to  the  Poor  House,"  was  "in  utter  disregard  of  all 
affectation  and  in  strict  adherence  to  facts.  That  the 
County  of  Madison  should  pay  out  seven  thousand 
dollars  a  year  to  support  an  institution  in  such  degrad 
ing  style  was  a  blot  on  her  escutcheon  years  could  not 
erase." 

The  indictment  brought  the  Poor  Farm  overseer  to 
town  with  a  "gun"  in  his  pocket.  He  met  the  "Crank" 
at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  who, 

"Quaking  like  an  aspen  leaf 
Referred  him  to  his  journal  Chief." 

Fortunately  the  chief  editor  was  "somewhere  down  the 
street."  When  the  overseer  found  him  the  sign  in  the 
zodiac  was  unfavorable  for  shooting  and  he  returned 
to  the  Farm  to  let  the  sun  set  on  his  wrath.  Mean 
time  the  "Crank,"  like  a  thief  in  the  night,  had  fled 
through  an  alley  to  the  White  River  thickets,  there  to 
remain  till  Old  Granny  Dusk — 


356  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"With,  her  cluckety  shoes,  and  her  old  black  gown 
Came  to  pilot  his  shadow  back  into  town." 

The  anti-liquor  "Crusaders"  began  to  buzz  about 
the  "Jingling  Editor"  soon  after  the  jolly  Muse  sang 
the  praise  of  wine,  though  the  production  that  gave 
particular  offense  was  a  burlesque  on  baseball.  They 
saw  more  in  it  than  the  ridicule  of  a  popular  game. 
It  was  a  libel  on  their  favorite  Temperance  advocate, 
Luther  Benson,  whose  arraignment  of  drink  was  as 
unforgetable  as  it  was  eloquent.  From  "the  green 
and  holy  morning  of  life"  he  had  one  long  struggle 
with  the  demon  Rum.  A  specimen  of  his  eloquence 
throws  light  on  his  friend's  "imitation" :  "In  winning 
men  from  evil,"  says  Benson,  in  one  of  his  brilliant 
periods,  "send  me  to  the  blasphemer  of  the  holy  Mas 
ter's  name ;  send  me  to  the  forger,  who  for  long  years 
of  cunning  has  defrauded  his  fellowmen;  send  me  to 
the  murderer,  who  lies  in  the  shadow  of  the  gallows, 
with  red  hands  dripping  with  the  blood  of  innocence ; 
but  send  me  not  to  the  lost  human  shape  whose  spirit  is 
on  fire,  and  whose  flesh  is  steaming  and  burning  with 
the  flames  of  hell.  And  why?  Because  his  will  is  en 
thralled  in  the  direst  bondage  conceivable — his  man 
hood  is  in  the  dust,  and  a  demon  sits  in  the  chariot  of 
his  soul,  lashing  the  fiery  steeds  of  passion  to  maniacal 
madness." 

Now  the  fact  is  that  no  son  of  misfortune  was 
more  fully  aware  of  the  truth  in  Benson's  words  than 
Riley.  He,  too,  was  in  bondage ;  he,  too,  was  fighting 
a  good  fight.  The  last  thing  in  the  world  he  would 
have  done  would  have  been  to  give  offense  to  a  man 
"whose  passion  for  liquor  could  slumber  for  weeks 
and  then  manifest  itself  with  the  force  of  a  hurricane." 

As  has  been  seen,  Riley  was  a  clever  imitator,  and 


ON  THE  TRIPOD  OF  THE  DEMOCRAT      357 

he  only  intended,  in  his  "imitation"  of  Benson,  to 
praise  the  orator's  eloquence.  But  participants  in  the 
"Murphy  Movement"  would  not  have  it  so — and, 
strange  to  say,  there  was  a  buzz  of  criticism  among 
baseball  zealots,  too.  The  flaming  caption  in  the 
Democrat,  "BENSON  OUT-BENSONED"  with  such 
sub-heads  as  "BASEBALL  CATCHER  HOPELESSLY  INSANE" 

and  "STRANGE  HALLUCINATION  OF  A  MADMAN"  Were  to 
say  the  least  unfortunate. 

"Are  you  going  to  fill  an  umpire's  grave  or  are 
you  going  to  quit  and  be  a  man?"  Baseball  fans  did 
not  like  it. 

With  implied  apologies  to  Benson  his  clever  imitator 
poured  a  stream  of  eloquence  through  the  lips  of  "a  most 
remarkable  specimen  of  lunacy,  Tod  Geary,  the  famous 
baseball  catcher,  who  it  will  be  remembered  has,  since 
May,  been  suffering  mentally  from  an  injury  received 
on  the  head  by  the  careless  batting  of  Cy  Thatcher." 
The  way  Geary  "poured  forth  the  stream"  was  rather 
dramatic.  Taking  his  position,  according  to  Riley,  on 
a  little  square  zinc  that  was  tacked  on  the  uncarpeted 
floor  of  the  asylum,  and  unbuttoning  his  collar,  and 
rolling  up  his  sleeves,  his  "startling  invective"  (in 
part)  fell  on  the  ear  as  follows: 

"Talk  to  me  of  whisky!"  he  exclaimed;  "Why,  I 
tell  you,  men,  if  every  crazy,  crawling,  writhing,  hiss 
ing  serpent  of  the  curse  were  let  loose  upon  me  now,  I 
could  take  them  to  my  bosom  here,  and  fondle  them  and 
pet  them  and  love  them  like  so  many  rosy  babies,  if 
it  would  for  one  minute  free  me  from  the  bloody  fangs 
of  the  inflaming  passion  for  Baseball. 

"Away  far  back  along  the  dusky  shadows  of  the 
past,  as  far  away  as  History,  the  eagle-eyed,  can  fathom 
with  her  far-reaching  vision,  we  find  the  charred  and 


358  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

blackened  symbols  of  the  game  of  sport,  that  in  old 
Babylonish  days  coaxed  lazy  laughter  from  the  lips  of 
kings,  and  tickled  royal  ribs  with  senseless  mirth.  The 
curse  of  this  debasing  appetite  in  man  has  been  pam 
pered,  fed  and  fostered  for  so  long,  that  to-day,  two 
thousand  millions  of  human  beings  are  bound  in  loath 
some  bondage  with  the  rustless  chains  of  habit,  and 
fettered  and  fastened  down  forever  to  a  vice  as  hope 
lessly  damnable  as  that  which  first  brought  sin  and 
death  into  the  world,  and  locked  with  relentless  bars  of 
fate  the  gilded  gates  of  Paradise. 

"No,  I  tell  you,  Baseball  is  a  snare  and  a  delusion. 
To-day  the  whole  wide  world  writhes  and  blisters  under 
the  incandescent  fury  of  this  fiery  element  condensed 
and  focused  into  a  white-heat  of  passion  that  would 
hiss  and  boil  and  bubble  over  a  slack  tub  of  morality 
as  wide  and  deep  as  the  Atlantic  Ocean."  (A  raking 
fire  for  the  fans.) , 

While  lesser  vexations  were  exchanging  shots  with 
the  "Perspiring  Poet,"  a  more  violent  tempest  was 
brewing.  The  baseball  episode  and  the  "hip  pocket 
gun"  were  breezes  in  comparison  with  the  storm  that 
rose  out  of  the  unknown  when  the  spirit  of  "the  late 
lamented  Poe"  began  to  walk  abroad.  Since  that  was 
a  blast  of  huge  proportions,  it  is  reserved  for  a  chap 
ter  of  its  own.  It  was  the  sky-rocket  that  brought  the 
"exercises"  on  the  Democrat  to  a  close. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO 

THE  "Jingling  Editor"  of  the  Democrat  was  wont 
to  strain  what  usage  terms  poetic  license.     He 
did  so  in  that  racy  sample  of  metrical  porridge, 
"Thanksgiving  Day  at  Henchley's."    Gleefully  ran  the 
metrical  stream: — 

"And  this  is  how  it  happened  some  discrepancies  befell 
At  the  late  midsummer  meeting  in  front  of  the  hotel, 
Where,  it  seems,  the  folks  assembled  were  concurring 

more  to  be 
In  keeping  with  contention  than  the  laws  of  harmony. 

"For  there  among  the  number  were  two  rivals  of  the 
press, 

Who  had  photographed  each  other  with  prolonged  ma 
liciousness  ; 

Who  in  their  respective  columns  had  a  thousand  words 
to  spare 

For  the  other  fellow  just  across  the  county  Public 
Square. 

"And  cheek  by  jowl  together  were  two  members  of  the 

bar, 

Politically,  legally,  and  socially  at  war, 
Who  denounced  each  other  daily,  and  in  every  local 

phrase 

That  could  make  the  matter  binding  all  the  balance 
of  their  days. 

359 


360  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"And  an  ordinary  actor,  and  an  artist  of  renown, 
Whose  cue,  it  seemed,  for  smiling  was  the  little  actor's 

frown ; 
And  the  most  loquacious  author  my  remembrance  can 

recall, 
And  a  little  bench-leg  poet  that  couldn't  talk  at  all." 

Riley  fancied  the  notable  occasion  as  at  some  little 
town  on  the  "Bee  Line."  The  little  town  was  the  big 
town  of  Anderson.  The  originals  of  the  characters 
had  participated  in  a  series  of  discussions,  serious  and 
otherwise,  which  culminated  in  a  whirlwind  of  criti 
cism,  the  "shadowy  disaster"  (to  borrow  his  friend 
Nye's  figurative  words)  "wherein  the  'Jingling  Edi 
tor's'  feelings  gave  way  beneath  his  feet  and  his  heart 
broke  with  a  loud  report." 

The  "bench-leg  poet"  was  the  "Poet  at  the  Crank" ; 
the  "loquacious  author,"  an  average  chap  about  town 
with  ambitions  a  trifle  higher  than  the  mediocrity  of 
his  performance.  The  "artist  of  renown"  was  the  in 
dustrious  Samuel  Richards,  the  Artist  Comrade,  who 
from  week  to  week  illustrated  the  jingling  verse  on  the 
Democrat.  His  paintings  caught  the  attention  of  John 
Ruskin.  His  "Evangeline,"  now  in  possession  of  the 
Detroit  Art  Museum,  was  exhibited  in  many  cities. 
The  "little  actor"  was  "the  twittering  pilgrim  from 
Oshkosh,v  the  Graphic  Chum,  who,  after  discovering 
the  "Golden  Girl"  and  wandering  under  moonless  heav 
ens  with  a  "Rip  Van  Winkle  Company,"  had  returned  to 
Anderson  to  enter  a  law  office.  Of  the  "two  members  of 
the  bar,"  one  was  the  late  Captain  W.  R.  Myers,  who 
served  his  country  as  a  soldier,  and  his  commonwealth 
as  secretary  of  state.  He  could  spin  a  good  story.  He 
was  not  a  stranger  to  eloquence.  His  voice  was  the 
envy  of  all  who  heard  him,  the  eminent  author  of  Ben- 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  361 

Hur  once  remarking  that  he  "would  consider  his  for 
tune  made  if  he  possessed  it."  The  "two  rivals  of  the 
press"  were,  first,  William  M.  Groan,  the  life-long 
friend  to  whom  credit  is  due  for  Riley's  employment  on 
the  Democrat;  and,  second,  William  Kinnard,  the  editor 
of  the  rival  paper,  the  Anderson  Herald.  He  was  a 
young  man  of  literary  taste,  had  a  subtle  sense  of 
humor ;  and  he  could  strike  hard  when  he  thought  the 
offense  demanded  it. 

"Sing  Ho!  for  the  Herald,  that  popular  sheet! 
The  friend  of  the  honest,  the  foe  of  the  'beat,' 
The  pride  of  the  good,  the  dread  of  the  'hard/ — ; 
The  dissonant  ring  of  metallic  Kinnard." 

There  were  also,  on  occasion,  "two  disciples  from  the 
medical  fraternity"  and,  now  and  then,  a  "thankful 
pastor."  The  bone  of  contention  was  the  recognition 
of  young  writers.  The  club  usually  met  at  Richards' 
Gallery,  or  the  Democrat  office — and  rarely  under  the 
trees  in  the  Court  House  yard.  At  the  time  "some  dis 
crepancies  befell,"  there  was  a  full  attendance  seated  in 
the  chairs  near  the  sidewalk  in  front  of  the  hotel,  where 
the  temperature  of  the  night  blended  fervently  with 
the  heat  of  contention. 

"0  Stilwell  House!    Thou  royal  palace  hall 
Whose  arching  doorway  and  inviting  stair, 
To  all  who  cast  a  happy  anchor  there, 
Is  gracious  boon  and  benison — We  fall 
Upon  our  knees  in  thanks  for  all 
The  culinary  dainties  of  thy  fare" — • 

but  most  of  all  we  thank  thee  for  the  nervous  bush- 
fighting  that  preceded  the  great  newspaper  war  known 
to  literature  as  the  "Leonainie  Controversy." 

"Quit  pushing  your  pencil  and  go  to  painting  signs," 


362  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

said  the  rival  editor,  prodding  the  poet  on  his  failure 
to  receive  eastern  recognition. 

"I  am  not  accepted  by  the  magazines  because  I  have 
no  reputation,"  returned  the  poet. 

"You  are  not  accepted  because  you  do  not  write 
poetry  the  people  want  to  read !" 

"No,"  continued  the  poet,  focusing  the  fire  of  his  eye 
on  his  rival,  "I  tell  you,  all  that  is  required  to  make  a 
poem  successful  and  popular  is  to  prove  its  author  a 
genius  known  to  fame." 

"The  plausible  opinion  of  a  young  writer,"  said  the 
Captain,  giving  the  editor  a  lift ;  "you  are  wrong ;  merit, 
not  the  name,  makes  a  poem  pass  muster.  Without 
name  or  credit,  it  travels  like  a  gold  piece  on  its  in 
trinsic  worth,  as  valuable  in  New  England  as  in  Indi 
ana.  Taddle  Your  Own  Canoe'  has  been  sung  thread 
bare,  and  yet  not  one  in  a  thousand  knows  its  author 
is  an  Indiana  woman.  Who  cares  for  the  mint,  so  the 
jingle  is  genuine.  Take  the  John  Brown  battle  song — 
his  soul  goes  marching  on — the  impetuous  music  that 
swept  over  battlefields  in  a  night ;  did  that  kindle  with 
in  the  heart  of  armies  the  swift  desire  for  action  be 
cause  its  author  bore  an  illustrious  name?  Or  take  the 
popular  'Rain  on  the  Roof — • 

'Listen  to  the  sweet  refrain 
That  is  played  upon  the  shingles 
By  the  patter  of  the  rain/ — 

Was  the  author  of  that  known  to  fame  ?  Did  he  have 
to  wait  for  the  stamp  of  magazine  approval  before  his 
poem  received  public  recognition?  Who  is  the  author? 
Nobody  knows." 

"Coates  Kinney,"  answered  the  poet. 

"Well,  nobody  cares." 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  363 

"I  care!" 

"There  is  the  poem,"  pursued  the  Captain  sagely; 
"it  sang  itself  straight  into  the  public  heart." 

"Not  straight,"  returned  the  poet;  "it  had  to  take  the 
jog-trot  route  via  the  weeklies.  Had  the  signature 
been  Longfellow  instead  of  Kinney,  the  poem  would 
have  flown  on  the  wings  of  the  wind." 

"The  wisdom  of  Nestor!"  exclaimed  the  loquacious 
author,  approvingly. 

"You  mean  Tom  Noddy !"  retorted  the  editor. 
"A  few  years  ago,"  continued  the  poet,  diverting 
thought  from  the  editor's  rebuff,  "Robert  Bonner  of 
the  New  York  Ledger  paid  Henry  Ward  Beecher 
twenty-five  thousand  dollars  for  Norwood — that  fabu 
lous  sum  simply  for  a  name.  Had  some  anonymous 
author  submitted  the  manuscript,  the  first  five  pages 
would  have  consigned  it  to  the  waste  basket." 

"And  the  same  Robert  Bonner,"  added  the  artist, 
rallying  to  the  aid  of  the  poet,  "paid  Longfellow  three 
thousand  dollars  for  the  'Hanging  of  the  Crane/  Had 
the  author  been  unknown  he  would  not  have  paid  thirty 
dollars  for  it." 

"It  would  have  been  declined,"  said  the  poet. 

"Who  reads  the  'Hanging  of  the  Crane'?"  asked  the 
actor,  derisively. 

"I  do,"  answered  the  Captain. 

"Flapdoodle!"  snapped  the  little  actor,  who,  a  loyal 
employee  in  the  law  office,  was  nevertheless  that  par 
ticular  night  the  Captain's  antagonist. 

"An  empty  shell,"  added  the  loquacious  author,  but 
whether  he  meant  the  Captain  or  the  poem  was  not  ex 
actly  clear. 

"Beg  your  pardon,  gentlemen,"  said  the  tranquil 
Captain ;  "you  fly  the  mark.  At  heart,  the  truth  is  this : 


364  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

the  merit  of  a  poem  wins,  whether  its  author  be  Long 
fellow  or  Kinney,  known  or  unknown.  Permit  me  to 
quote  a  line  from  a  poem  some  of  you,  perhaps,  have 
read.  Its  author  sees  the  azure  eyes  of  children, 
dreamy  and 

"  'Limpid  as  planets  that  emerge 
Above  the  ocean's  rounded  verge, 
Soft  shining  through  the  summer  night.' 

Do  you  say  that  has  no  merit?  Do  you  call  that  flap 
doodle?" 

"Heaven  forbid!"  interrupted  the  artist. 

"Beautiful !"  returned  the  actor. 

"The  gentleman  is  quite  safe  in  that  opinion,"  said 
the  Captain;  "it  is  beautiful.  He  will  find  it  in  the 
'Hanging  of  the  Crane,' " — on  which  a  titter  of  con 
fusion  went  round  the  circle  at  the  little  actor's  ex 
pense. 

"You  gentlemen  claim,"  continued  the  Captain, 
warming  up  to  the  subject,  "that  a  young  writer  does 
not  receive  the  recognition  he  deserves.  I  claim  he 
does.  Nothing  can  keep  talent  down.  The  real 
trouble  with  the  literature  of  to-day  is  that  the  stand 
ard  of  criticism  is  not  more  severe.  The  way  to  liter 
ary  celebrity  is  made  easy  and  smooth,  not  narrow  and 
hard  as  in  the  days  of  the  Scottish  Reviewers — the 
result  being  this,  that  Father  Time  has  to  kill  off  car 
goes  of  imitators  and  pretenders  that  never  should 
have  been  permitted  to  afflict  the  public." 

"We  are  wandering,"  said  the  poet.  "Hear  me :  I 
tell  you  the  trade-mark  does  influence  the  public,  though 
the  thing  sold  may  be  as  juiceless  and  insipid  as  a 
sucked  lemon.  A  poem  over  the  signature  of  Bryant, 
Whittier  or  Tennyson  has  the  preference  though  it  may 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  365 

be  inferior  to  'The  Rain  on  the  Roof/  and  a  thousand 
other  gems  that  fail  to  receive  the  golden  opinion  of 
the  magazines.  Established  houses  in  the  world  of 
business  have  preference  with  the  people.  Reputation 
goes  as  far  in  literature  as  in  commerce." 

''Yes,"  broke  in  the  artist,  emphatically,  "and  poems 
have  been  lauded  to  the  skies  in  the  heyday  of  a  poet's 
fame  that  fell  dead  from  the  press  when  he  was  in 
obscurity." 

"Why,"  continued  the  artist,  "does  the  publisher  call 
to  eminent  authors  for  more  when  there  is  no  more? 
When  a  well  is  pumped  empty  it  would  seem  to  accord 
with  common  sense  to  go  where  there  is  water — fresh 
water,  if  you  please,  gushing  from  a  hitherto  unknown 
spring.  Hundreds  of  productions  are  flaunted  daily  in 
our  faces  because  celebrated  authors  wrote  them,  copied 
and  reproduced  by  the  press  till  the  market  is  choked 
with  literary  rubbish." 

"Unfit  for  the  scrap-heap,"  interrupted  the  actor, 
swinging  merrily  from  one  side  of  the  question  to 
the  other.  "The  stuff  ought  to  be  bucked  and  gagged, 
and  rolled  up  like  a  ball  of  stale  popcorn  and  thrown 
out  of  the  car  window." 

"At  which  unhappy  juncture  came  a  journalistic  gust, 
Which  the  rival  designated  as  a  most  atrocious  thrust." 

"Where  is  the  Red-eyed  Law?"  shrieked  the  loqua 
cious  author. 

"And  the  Grand  Jury?"  added  the  actor.  "Con 
spiracy!"  the  editor  cries.  On  which  the  actor  asks, 
"Who  says  so?"  "Anybody! — I  say  so!"  cries  the 
editor.  To  which  the  artist  adds  sarcastically,  "Oh, 
indeed!"  Followed  by  the  actor's  blunt  retort,  "Yes, 


366  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

indeed!"  And  then — to  give  figurative  meaning  to 
the  lines — 

"There  was  a  shadowy  remembrance  of  a  group  of 

three  or  four 
Who  were  seemingly  dissecting  another  on  the  floor." 

By  which  time  the  sidewalk  and  the  hotel  lobby  were  in 
such  a  combustible  state  that  it  took  an  adjournment 
and  the  remainder  of  the  night  to  cool  things  down. 

Such  in  substance  (with  a  little  spice  from  Dickens) 
is  an  epitome  of  the  contention  that  gave  birth 
to  that  curiosity  known  to  literary  history  as  the 
'Toe  Poem" — the  clash  of  words,  so  to  speak,  that 
preceded  Riley's  resolution  to  test  his  dictum,  that 
a  poem  to  be  successful  and  popular  must  have  as  its 
author  a  genius  known  to  fame.  Things  were  happen 
ing  to  justify  his  position.  The  graceful  poem,  "A 
Country  Pathway,"  had  recently  been  returned  to  its 
author  a  second  time.  Already  Myron  Reed  was  send 
ing  a  Riley  poem  to  a  New  York  magazine.  Once  a 
year  for  six  years  the  magazine  declined  the  poem.  Its 
author  was  unknown.  The  seventh  year  it  was  ac 
cepted.  Riley  had  then  published  his  first  book;  he 
was  at  the  door  of  an  auspicious  future. 

The  Poe-Poem  venture  was  an  innocent  collusion 
with  deception.  It  never  entered  Riley's  head 
to  prolong  the  deceit.  As  soon  as  he  had  won 
his  point,  he  would  explain  all  to  the  satisfac 
tion  of  all.  "I  wanted,"  said  he,  "to  chuck  the 
poem  in  the  face  of  my  opponents  as  proof  of  my 
position."  When  older  he  usually  evaded  the  subject 
but,  if  pressed  for  comment,  was  sometimes  reminded 
of  an  innocent  pioneer  farmer,  who  had  been  haled  be 
fore  a  country  squire  for  larceny.  "I  was  arrested  for 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  867 

Btealin'  shoats,"  said  the  f  amer,  "and  the  wust  of  it  wuz, 
the  prosecution  come  darn  near  provin'  it."  Riley  was 
innocent  of  any  desire  to  deceive  the  public  perma 
nently,  "but  the  critics,"  said  he,  "came  darn  near  prov 
ing  me  a  crafty  Pecksniff." 

Riley  was  not  the  first  in  that  hapless  field.  Authors 
before  him  had  feigned  the  literary  style  of 
other  writers.  One  hundred  years  before,  Thomas 
Chatterton  had  published  certain  poems,  which  he 
claimed  had  been  written  by  a  monk  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  Riley  celebrated  the  centenary  of  the  event 
by  a  little  counterfeit  of  his  own.  William  Ireland,  a 
London  author,  as  told  in  his  Confessions,  had  pro 
duced  a  tragedy,  purported  to  have  been  written  by 
Shakespeare,  which  drew  a  crowded  house  at  Drury 
Lane,  Kemble  playing  the  principal  part. 

Nor  was  it  Riley's  first  offense.  He  had  been  a  party 
to  jolly  stratagems  from  his  youth.  In  his  school-days, 
as  editor  of  the  Criterion,  he  connived  with  the  editor 
of  the  Amendment,  the  rival  school  paper,  and  wrote 
editorials  for  it  in  abuse  of  himself  and  the 
Criterion — "the  badly  bruised  and  shattered  Criterion 
is  now  sinking  lower  and  lower  in  the  corrosive  scale 
of  self-esteem,"  and  so  forth.  As  the  reader  has  seen, 
he  was  party  to  a  big-sign  ruse  when  his  crafty  confed 
erate  while  painting  the  bridge  at  Anderson,  fell  from 
the  ladder  into  the  river. 

Having  decided  on  the  literary  ruse,  the  first  thing 
was  the  choice  of  an  author.  One  of  Reynolds'  pleasant 
delusions  was  the  fancy  that  the  divinity  of  Michael 
Angelp  inspired  him  in  his  productions — "he  was  ever 
calling  on  his  name — invoking  him  by  his  works." 
Similar  delusions  haunted  Riley's  fancy;  indeed,  had 
been  a  source  of  diversion  ever  since  he  had  read  the 


368  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"British  Books."  When  he  wrote  a  "clever  imitation" 
he  invoked  the  influence  of  the  author  he  was  attempt 
ing  to  reflect.  "Looking  over  the  list  of  the  dead  poets," 
said  Riley,  "I  selected  Poe  because  I  thought  he  would 
enjoy  the  joke.  He  had  been  a  little  in  the  hoaxing 
line  himself — his  'Balloon  Hoax*  for  instance — and 
would  not  care  if  I  took  some  liberty  with  his  name." 

A  second  reason  for  choosing  Poe  for  the  ruse  was 
Riley's  fellow-feeling  for  the  author  and  his  style.  He 
liked  Poe's  insistence  upon  "an  even,  metrical  flow  in 
versification."  He  thought  of  him  as  "one  looking  from 
an  eminence  rather  than  from  the  ordinary  level  of 
humanity."  There  was  something — he  had  not  experi 
enced  it  to  Poe's  pitch  of  frenzy — something  by  which 
he  more  fully  comprehended  the  true  proportions  of 
"that  marred  and  broken  individuality,  that  nature  so 
sensitively  organized  and  so  rarely  developed,  under 
circumstances  exceptionally  perilous  and  perverting." 
He  sympathized  with  Poe's  hopeless  despair. 

The  "Jingling  Editor"  was  interested  in  the  fact  that 
"The  Bells"  had  been  composed  and  finished  in  the  year 
of  his  birth.  While  "grinding  business  to  an  edge,"  he 
had  had  a  little  fun,  at  Poe's  expense,  with  some  dry 
goods  merchants,  the  Bell  Brothers.  (Doubtless  Poe 
did  not  enjoy  the  joke,  but  the  "Crank"  was  not  con 
sidering  that  phase  of  it  then.) 

HAPPY  BELLS ! 

What  a  list  of  rare  inducements  their  advertising  tells ! 

How  they  dance  adown  the  gamut 

To  the  lowest  of  the  less, 

And  crowd  it  on  and  ram  it 

Through  the  gangway  to  success ! 

And  unrivaled  in  low  prices, 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  369 

How  they  lift  and  loom  alone 

Far  above  the  low  devices 

And  the  tricks  the  trade  has  known ; 

And  even  mounting  higher 

Up  the  ringing  rounds  of  fame, 

How  they  lift  the  eager  buyer 

To  an  altitude  the  same, 

Till  the  customers  transported 

With  the  glory  they  have  courted, 

Throw  their  happy-haunted  hats 

To  the  bats — bats — bats 

And  hop  and  whoop  and  howl 

And  prance  around  and  yowl 

Till  they  drive  the  chorus  crazy  with  their  suicidal  yells 

To  the  tintinnabulations  of  the  Bells!  Bells!  Bells! 

Choosing  an  author  for  the  ruse  was  one  thing,  writ 
ing  a  poem  for  it  a  different  and  more  difficult  thing.  It 
was  "writing  to  order,"  a  thing  that  Riley  seldom  suc 
cessfully  did.  It  was  a  mad  venture. 

In  April,  soon  after  his  arrival  in  Anderson,  he  had 
written  "Orlie  Wilde."  He  thought  of  that  "fanciful 
fishermaid." 

....    "He  saw  her  fly 

In  reckless  haste  adown  a  crag, 
Her  hair  a-flutter  like  a  flag 
Of  gold  that  danced  across  the  strand 
In  little  mists  of  silver  sand." 

The  marine  myth  however  scarcely  met  the  require 
ments.  It  was  Poe-ish,  in  a  way,  Poe-ish  in  theme,  but 
he  could  not  make  it  Poe-ish  in  poetic  structure.  After 
wrestling  with  the  poem  several  nights  in  the  Democrat 
office,  Riley  spent  a  night  at  the  home  of  his  Graphic 
Chum,  the  old  boarding  house  on  Bolivar  Street,  where 
in  originated  "The  Object  Lesson"  and  other  bantlings 
of  his  Graphic  days.  "On  that  solemn  summer  night" 
(Saturday,  July  7,  1877)  "I  could  not  sleep,"  said  he. 


370  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"I  fancied  a  man  idly  walking  about  in  the  darkness 
waiting  for  the  birth  of  his  child — then  the  birth  and 
the  murmur  of  something  from  the  Heaven-sent 
visitor,  followed  by  the  father's  interpretation  of  the 
murmur  as  a  message  to  him.  While  my  chum  snored 
away  in  peace,  I  rose,  seating  myself  in  my  bed-gown 
by  a  window.  I  made  a  rough  draft  of  the  poem  that 
had  been  floating  like  nebula  in  the  chaos  of  my 
thought.  From  the  sky  over  Anderson  there  came  the 
idea  to  make  the  'little  lisper'  float  away  as  a  dream  on 
the  wings  of  night."  He  entitled  the  poem  "Leonainie" 
and  made  few  changes  in  the  first  draft. 

"Leonainie — Angels  named  her ; 
And  they  took  the  light 
Of  the  laughing  stars  and  framed  her 
In  a  smile  of  white." 

In  this  Poe  mystery  there  was  more  than  appeared 
on  the  face  of  it.  "Leonainie"  was  not  only  mysterious 
to  the  public  but  to  its  author  as  well. 

"How  I  found  it,  caught  it,  or  came  by  it, 
What  stuff  'tis  made  of,  whereof  it  is  born,  I  am  to 
learn." 

A  rival  editor,  quoting  a  Riley  remark,  said  it  was 
a  "poetical  fungus  which  sprang  from  the  decay  of  high 
thoughts." 

That  it  was  phrased  in  the  morbid,  fantastic  vein, 
characteristic  of  Poe,  impartial  judges  conceded 
from  the  first.  That  the  poem  had  defects  was  also 
conceded.  "The  measure  is  faulty,"  said  its  author, 
"and  there  are  faulty  lines  in  it — there  purposely  to 
chafe  the  intolerable  conceit  of  the  critics,  for  example, 

Heaven's  glory  seemed  adorning 
Earth  with  its  esteem." 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  371 

"If  Poe  wrote  that,"  said  a  Cincinnati  critic  after 
"Leonainie"  was  printed,  "it  was  when  he  was  in  pina 
fores."  Other  critics  made  similar  comments,  one  ob 
serving  that  "esteem  ruined  'Leonainie.'  It  is  a  fatal 
word  in  every  poem  where  it  is  made  to  rhyme."  Mean 
while  the  author  chuckled  to  himself  as  did  the  author 
of  the  "Raven"  when  he  confused  the  critics  of  Boston. 

"Leonainie"  contained  one  line  that  covered  a  multi 
tude  of  literary  sins;  that  the  critics  could  not  decry. 
A  host  of  readers  saw  imperishable  beauty  in  "God 
smiled  and  it  was  morning."  Many  hazarded  the 
prophecy  that  that  line  would  live  with  such  immortal 
verse  as  "God  is  sifting  out  the  hearts  of  men  before 
His  judgment  seat,"  or  "The  paths  of  glory  lead  but 
to  the  grave." 

Although  "Leonainie"  was  practically  finished,  the 
venture  was  still  in  doubt.  One  day  the  poet  was  for 
it,  another  day  against  it. 

But  his  ambition  called  to  him.  If  his  verse  had 
merit,  it  should  have  recognition.  He  would  take  the 
risk: 

"I  have  set  my  life  upon  the  cast, 
And  I  will  stand  the  hazard  of  the  die." 

Meantime  he  was  considering  a  vehicle  for  the  ruse. 
To  print  it  in  the  Democrat,  where  there  had  already 
appeared  a  surplus  of  curiosities,  meant  that  the  pub 
lic  would  immediately  declare  the  poem  a  fake.  A  few 
days  prior,  the  editor  of  the  Kokomo  Dispatch,  John  0. 
Henderson  "had  fretted  himself  to  the  verge  of  insan 
ity,"  according  to  an  exchange,  in  a  mad  endeavor  to 
decipher  the  incomprehensible  jingle  in  "Craque- 
odoom,"  whose  tattoo  on  the  roof  of  the  dusk,  the  Artist 
Chum  made  more  abstruse  by  a  spectral  illustration 


372  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

representing  the  crankadox,  a  ghoulish  reptile  with  a 
mammoth  fin  and  a  loop  in  its  tail,  standing  with  one 
foot  on  the  horn  of  the  moon. 

"The  quavering  shriek  of  the  fly-up-the-creek 
Was  fitfully  wafted  afar 

To  the  queen  of  the  Wunks  as  she  powdered  her  cheek 
With  the  pulverized  rays  of  a  star." 

"What  does  it  mean?"  asked  Henderson,  commenting 
in  the  Dispatch  on  "the  gifted"  J.  W.  Riley.  "It  is  the 
most  weird  piece  of  poetic  thought  we  have  ever  read. 
It  reads  like  an  effusion  of  some  poetic  genius  of  the 
fable  age  in  which  Mother  Goose  wrote  her  melodies." 
The  comment  pleased  the  "Jingling  Poet"  immensely, 
and  he  promptly  thanked  the  editor  for  "the  first 
friendly  hand  extended  him  in  that  period  of  impene 
trable  gloom."  The  result  was  the  choice  of  the  Ko- 
komo  Dispatch  for  the  ruse — and  the  following  letter 
breaking  the  news  to  the  editor: 

OFFICE  OF  THE  ANDERSON  DEMOCRAT 
Todisman  &  Groan,  Proprietors 

Anderson,  Indiana,  July  23,  1877. 
Editor  Dispatch — Dear  Sir : 

I  write  to  ask  a  rather  curious  favor  of  you.  The 
dull  times  worry  me,  and  I  yearn  for  something  to  stir 
things  from  their  comatose  condition.  Trusting  to  find 
you  of  like  inclination,  I  ask  your  confidence  and  as 
sistance. 

This  idea  has  been  haunting  me: — I  will  prepare  a 
poem — carefully  imitating  the  style  of  some  popular 
American  poet,  deceased,  and  you  may  "give 
it  to  the  world  for  the  first  time"  through  the 
columns  of  your  paper,  prefacing  it  in  some  ingenious 
manner,  with  the  assertion  that  the  original  manu 
script  was  found  in  the  album  of  an  old  lady  living 
in  your  town — and  in  the  handwriting  of  the  poet 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  373 

imitated — together  with  signature,  etc.,  etc. — you 
can  fix  the  story — only  be  sure  to  clinch  it  so  as  to 
defy  the  scrutiny  of  the  most  critical  lens.  If 
we  succeed,  and  I  think  sheer  audacity  sufficient 
capital  to  assure  that  end, — after  "working  up"  the 
folks,  and  smiling  over  the  encomiums  of  the  Press, 
don't  you  know;  we  will  then  "rise  up  William  Riley," 
and  bu'st  our  literary  balloon  before  a  bewildered  and 
enlightened  world ! ! ! 

I  write  you  this  in  all  earnestness  and  confidence, 
trusting  you  will  favor  the  project  with  your  valuable 
assistance.  It  will  be  obvious  to  you  why  I  do  not  use 
our  paper  here.  Should  you  fall  in  with  the  plan,  write 
me  at  once,  and  I  will  prepare  and  send  the  poem  in 
time  for  your  issue  of  this  week.  Hoping  for  an  early 
and  favorable  response,  I  am 

Very  truly  yours, 
J.  W.  RILEY. 

Had  the  letter  dropped  from  a  balloon  the  Dispatch 
had  not  been  more  surprised.  Its  editor,  an  energetic, 
enthusiastic  young  man,  was  about  Riley's  age.  He 
appreciated  good  literature,  and  particularly  the  poetic 
gifts  of  his  new  friend,  so  his  prompt  answer  was  to  be 
expected: — 

THE  DISPATCH 

Kokomo,  Indiana,  July  23,  1877. 
J.  W.  Riley, 
My  Dear  Sir: 

Your  favor  of  this  date  is  just  received.  Your  ide^ 
is  a  capital  one  and  is  cunningly  conceived.  I  assure 
you  that  I  "tumble"  to  it  with  eagerness.  You  arc 
doubtless  aware  that  newspaper  men,  as  a  rule,  would 
rather  sacrifice  honor,  liberty,  or  life  itself,  than  to 
deviate  from  the  paths  of  truth — but  the  idea  of  getting 
in  a  juicy  "scoop"  upon  the  rural  exchanges,  causes  me 
to  hesitate,  consider,  yea,  consent  to  this  little  act  of 
journalistic  deception.  Yes,  my  dear  Riley,  I  am  with 
you  boots  and  soul.  But  hadn't  I  better  forestall  the 


374  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

poem  by  a  "startling  announcement"  or  something  of 
the  sort  one  week  before  its  publication?  The  public 
would  then  be  on  the  tiptoe  of  expectancy  and  so  forth. 
I  merely  offer  this  as  a  suggestion.  We  would  be  hardly 
able  to  publish  the  poem,  if  of  any  length,  this  week. 
Copy  is  well  in  for  Thursday's  issue  now,  save  local 
paragraphs.  Send  copy  as  soon  as  you  can  and  we  can 
print  next  week.  If  you  like,  you  may  also  write  the 
preface  as  you  have  indicated.  Perhaps  you  could  do 
it  better  than  I.  I  enclose  this  letter  in  a  plain  envelope 
to  disarm  suspicion.  Let  me  hear  from  you. 

Fraternally, 

J.  0.  HENDERSON. 
Mum's  the  word. 

For  a  fortnight  events  happened  rapidly.  !  July 
twenty-seventh,  the  editor  acknowledged  receipt  of 
the  poem  with  suggestions  for  its  publication.  "It  is 
really  Poe-etical,"  he  wrote,  "a  matchlessly  conceived 
poem.  It  certainly  would  not  detract  from  Poe's  genius 
to  father  the  fugitive.  I  assure  you  it  is  withal  a 
marvelous  and  rare  creation,  honoring  you  and  the 
State  as  well.  Have  not  yet  matured  my  story,  but  will 
have  it  in  due  time." 

Riley's  mind  did  indeed  brim  with  "startling  an 
nouncements,"  but  scarcely  had  he  prepared  one  when 
he  weakened  and  tried  another.  The  thought  of  after- 
claps  took  the  granite  out  of  his  courage.  At  the  last 
he  asked  the  Kokomo  editor  to  "weave  the  fabric  in  his 
own  loom.  Select  the  most  feasible  plan,"  he  added, 
"and  nip  it  at  once;  were  I  to  prepare  the  story,  the 
trick  might  be  betrayed  in  some  peculiarity  of  compo 
sition." 

He  first  thought  of  an  old  washerwoman,  who  should 
have  an  old  album  or  an  old  book  of  some  kind  from 
which  a  blank  leaf  could  be  torn.  Then  he  remembered 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  375 

that  an  old  woman  could  not  keep  a  secret.  When  in 
terviewed  by  the  curious  she  was  likely  to  speak  out  at 
the  wrong  time  and  let  the  ruse  down  prematurely.  To 
avert  this  danger  he  suggested  an  old  wood-sawyer.  If 
the  old  chap  did  not  have  an  old  book,  the  editor  was 
to  get  one,  and  when  the  curious  called  to  see  it,  as  they 
most  certainly  would,  they  were  to  be  told  that  it  had 
been  sent  to  W.  D.  Ho  wells  of  the  Atlantic,  or  some 
other  eminent  critic,  for  inspection. 

But  the  most  "startling  announcement"  of  all  was 
this: — In  a  dark  corner  of  a  walnut  woods,  some 
where  in  the  neighborhood  of  Cornstalk  Post  Office, 
on  Wild  Cat  Creek,  Howard  County,  obscured  by 
the  rocks  of  the  Devonian  Age,  the  editor  of  the  Dis 
patch  was  to  find  a  cave  in  the  side  of  a  hill.  (It  has 
been  remarked  there  is  not  a  hill  in  the  county  big 
enough  for  a  prairie  dog;  there  is,  however.)  The  edi 
tor  while  out  hunting  was  to  get  lost  in  a  terrific  storm 
and  grope  his  way  through  the  dismal  darkness  to  a 
faint  light  in  the  cave,  where  he  was  to  find  a  hunch 
backed  dwarf,  who  grudgingly  was  to  give  him  shelter 
from  the  storm.  While  the  hermit  prepared  a  meal 
over  a  bed  of  coals  on  the  rocky  floor,  the  editor  was 
to  find  an  old  book  on  a  rickety  table,  and  turning 
through  it  was  to  espy  on  a  fly  leaf  the  lines  in  manu 
script  of  an  old  poem  signed  E.  A.  P.  The  hermit,  very 
uncommunicative  at  first,  was  at  last  to  inform  the  edi 
tor  the  book  had  been  brought  from  Virginia. 

A  very  spectacular  tale,  but  not  at  all  plausible,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  editor.  He  was  to  be  the  hero  and  go 
out  hunting — he  "had  never  handled  a  gun  in  his  life." 
He  was  to  get  lost  in  a  storm  in  his  own  county,  and 
take  refuge  in  a  hermit's  den — another  impossible 
thing.  The  editor  promptly  rejected  the  scheme  as 


376  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

"a  dead  give-away  of  the  plot,"  and  instead  took  into 
his  confidence  a  meat  merchant  of  Kokomo.  Having 
eliminated  the  impossible  plans,  they  determined  on 
the  following  story,  which  was  printed  with  the  poem 
in  the  Dispatch,  August  2,  1877: 

POSTHUMOUS  POETRY 

A  Hitherto  Unpublished  Poem  of  the  Lamented  Edgar 

Allan  Poe — Written  on  the  Fly  Leaf  of  an  Old 

Book  Now  in  Possession  of  a  Gentleman  of 

This  City. 

The  following  beautiful  posthumous  poem  from  the 
gifted  pen  of  the  erratic  poet,  Edgar  Allan  Poe,  we  be 
lieve  has  never  before  been  published  in  any  form, 
either  in  any  published  collection  of  Poe's  now  extant, 
or  in  any  magazine  or  newspaper  of  any  description; 
and  until  the  critics  shall  show  conclusively  to  the  con 
trary,  The  Dispatch  shall  claim  the  honor  of  giving  it 
to  the  world. 

That  the  poem  has  never  before  been  published,  and 
that  it  is  a  genuine  production  of  the  poet  whom  we 
claim  to  be  its  author,  we  are  satisfied  from  the  circum 
stances  under  which  it  came  into  our  possession,  after 
a  thorough  investigation.  Calling  at  the  house  of  a 
gentleman  of  this  city  the  other  day,  on  a  business 
errand,  our  attention  was  called  to  a  poem  written  on 
the  blank  fly  leaf  of  an  old  book.  Handing  us  the  book 
he  observed  that  it  (the  poem)  might  be  good  enough 
to  publish,  and  that  if  we  thought  so,  to  take  it  along. 
Noticing  the  initials,  E.  A.  P.,  at  the  bottom  of  the 
poem,  it  struck  us  that  possibly  we  had  run  across  a 
"bonanza,"  so  to  speak,  and  after  reading  it,  we  asked 
who  its  author  was,  when  he  related  the  following  bit 
of  interesting  reminiscence :  He  said  he  did  not  know 
who  the  author  was,  only  that  he  was  a  young  man, 
that  is,  he  was  a  young  man  when  he  wrote  the  lines 
referred  to.  He  had  never  seen  him  himself,  but  heard 
his  grandfather,  who  gave  him  the  book  containing  the 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  377 

verses,  tell  of  the  circumstances  and  the  occasion  by 
which  he,  the  grandfather,  came  into  possession  of  the 
book.  His  grandparents  kept  a  country  hotel,  a  sort  of 
a  wayside  inn,  in  a  small  village  called  Chesterfield, 
near  Richmond,  Va.  One  night,  just  before  bedtime,  a 
young  man,  who  showed  plainly  the  marks  of  dissipa 
tion,  rapped  at  the  door  and  asked  if  he  could  stay  all 
night,  and  was  shown  to  a  room.  When  they  went  to 
his  room  the  next  morning  to  call  him  to  breakfast,  he 
had  gone  away  and  left  the  book,  on  the  fly  leaf  of 
which  he  had  written  the  lines  given  below. 

Further  than  this  our  informant  knew  nothing,  and 
being  an  uneducated,  illiterate  man,  it  was  quite  nat 
ural  that  he  should  allow  the  great  literary  treasure  to 
go  for  so  many  years  unpublished. 

That  the  above  statement  is  true,  and  our  discovery 
no  canard,  we  will  take  pleasure  in  satisfying  anyone 
who  cares  to  investigate  the  matter.  The  poem  is  writ 
ten  in  Roman  characters,  and  is  almost  as  legible  as 
print  itself,  although  somewhat  faded  by  the  lapse  of 
time.  Another  peculiarity  in  the  manuscript  which  we 
notice  is  that  it  contains  not  the  least  erasure  or  a 
single  interlineated  word.  We  give  the  poem  ("Leo- 
nainie")  verbatim — just  as  it  appears  in  the  original. 

Nearly  a  score  of  years  later  the  poet  included  the 
poem  in  his  volume,  Armazindy. 

"Dear,  dear  Henderson — and  I  have  a  notion  to  call 
you  darling/'  wrote  Riley  on  reading  the  Dispatch. 
"The  'Leonainie'  introductory  is  superb.  As  for  the 
leading  paragraph,  a  neater,  sweeter  lie  was  never  ut 
tered.  I  fancy  Poe  himself  leans  tiptoe  over  the  walls 
of  Paradise  and  perks  an  eager  ear  to  listen  and  be 
lieve."  Again  he  cautioned  the  Dispatch  to  guard  "the 
imposition  with  jealous  care.  Let  no  one  know  it — 
not  even  your  mother-in-law,  if  you  possess  so  near  and 
dear  a  relative.  I  shake  your  hand  in  silence  and  in 
tears.  In  the  language  of  Artemus  Ward — 'I  am  here 
* — I  think  so — Even  of  those/  " 


378  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

All  the  Dispatch  had  to  do  was  to  smile  inwardly, 
with  "a  lack-lustre,  dead  blue  eye,"  and  await  the  un 
folding  of  a  curious  future.  Have  faith  in  the  "orphan 
venture."  Await  developments.  Eventually  the 
"euchred  public  would  not  only  forgive,  but  render 
homage." 

"Mum  was  the  word"  at  Anderson.  The  author  of 
"Leonainie"  did  not  chalk  things  on  the  walls,  nor  cry 
them  on  the  streets.  He  was  a  sort  of  Mr.  Tulkinghorn, 
the  "Sphinx,"  knowing  all  sorts  of  things  and  never 
telling  them.  July  twenty-fifth,  he  admitted  to  the 
"circle  of  secrecy"  Mrs.  D.  M.  Jordan  of  the  Richmond 
Independent — "that  charming  child  of  song  whose 
melody  ripples  round  a  happy  world."  And  he  did 
wisely.  Throughout  the  gloom  then  gathering  just 
beyond  the  horizon,  she  was  his  steadfast  champion. 
Her  pen,  as  well  as  her  eyes,  was  capable  of  great 
expression. 

Good  Friend  (Riley  wrote) :  I  write — not  in  answer 
to  your  letter,  for  I  haven't  time  to  do  that  justice 
now — but  to  ask  of  you  a  very  special  favor. 

I  have  made  arrangements  with  the  editor  of  the 
Kokomo  Dispatch  that  he  shall  publish  the  poem  "Leon 
ainie,"  under  the  guise  of  its  being  the  work  of  Poe 
himself.  He,  Henderson,  is  to  invent  an  ingenious 
story  of  how  the  original  manuscript  came  into  his  pos 
session,  and  when  it  appears  with  a  hurrah  from  the 
Dispatch  I  shall  copy  and  comment  upon  it  in  the  Demo 
crat — in  a  way  that  will  show  that  I  have  no  complicity, 
and  I  want  you  to  review  it,  if  you  will,  favorably,  in 
the  Independent — I  don't  want  you  to  really  admire  it 
— but  I  do  want  you  to  pretend  to,  and  eulogize  over  it 
at  rapturous  length,  and  as  though  you  were  assured 
it  was  in  reality  the  work  of  Poe  himself — as  the  Dis 
patch  will  claim.  Our  object  is  to  work  up  the  "Press" 
broadcast  if  possible,  and  then  to  unsack  the  feline,  and 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  379 

let  the  "secret  laughter  that  tickles  all  the  soul"  erupt 
volcanically.  The  "Ring"  around  the  literary  torpedo 
as  it  now  lies  includes  but  four  persons,  including  your 
self,  and  it  must  be  the  unwavering  resolve  of  every 
member  to  hold  the  secret  safely  fastened  in  the  bosom 
quartette  till  time  shall  have  ripened  the  deception,  and 
the  slow  match  has  reached  the  touch-hole  of  success. 

Now  will  you  do  this  for  me?  Write  at  once,  for  I 
shall  not  be  thoroughly  happy  till  the  answer  which  I 
believe,  in  your  great  kindness,  you  will  give,  reaches 
me. 

How  are  you,  anyway?  Happy,  I  trust,  as  am  I  to 
sign  myself 

Your  friend, 

J.  W.  RlLEY. 

The  original  "ring  around  the  torpedo"  (persons  to 
be  intrusted  with  the  secret)  included  thirteen  names. 
Riley  discovering  the  unlucky  number,  reduced  it,  but 
the  sequel  shows  he  failed  to  eliminate  the  right  man. 

Immediately  on  printing  and  distributing  the 
"Leonainie"  issue,  the  Dispatch  editor  reprinted 
the  poem  with  a  notice  calling  attention  to 
it  on  small  slips  of  paper  which  he  mailed  to 
newspapers  and  magazines  (including  Scribner's, 
Harper's,  and  the  Atlantic)  with  request  that  they 
print  the  poem  and  give  credit  to  the  Dispatch.  He 
added  that  the  old  book  containing  the  manuscript  was 
in  his  possession,  and  further  that  he  would  give  ex 
perts  in  chirography  the  privilege  of  examining  it. 
That  was  the  clever  stroke  that  "excited  the  comment 
of  the  newspaper  world."  "Leonainie"  would  not  have 
gone  "the  rounds  of  the  press  like  wildfire,"  had  the 
enterprising  editor  not  mailed  the  slips  to  "every  State 
in  the  Union." 

The  second  day  after  publication  came  an  inquiry 
from  the  "Sphinx"  at  Anderson: 


380  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

Editor  Dispatch, 
Dear  Sir- 
Some  literary  thug  has  gobbled  our  Dispatch  contain 
ing  your  Poe  discovery.  Please  send  me  two  or  three 
extra  copies.  What  does  it  mean?  Are  you  in  ear 
nest?  I  would  like  to  enter  into  a  correspondence  with 
you  regarding  it,  for  even  though  you  be  the  victim  of 
a  deception  I  would  be  proud  to  know  your  real  author. 
Do  I  understand  from  your  description  that  the  manu 
script  is  written  like  printed  letters?  Write  me  full 
particulars  and  I  will  serve  you  in  response  in  any  way 
in  my  power. 

yery  truly, 

J.  W.  RILEY. 

The  "Sphinx"  might  be  garrulous  and  propose  rid 
dles  outside  the  "circle  of  secrecy" — but  never  a  word 
within  it.  At  first  he  was  content  to  say  (editorially 
in  the  Democrat)  that  the  Kokomo  Dispatch  of  yester 
day  "startles  the  nation  and  the  hull  creation"  by  pub 
lishing  a  posthumous  Poe  Poem,  "clamorously  claiming 
the  honor  of  its  first  presentation  to  the  world.  Lack  of 
space  prevents  us  from  further  remark;  but  we  will 
say,  however,  that  of  all  the  Nazareths  now  at  large, 
Kokomo  is  the  last  from  which  we  would  expect  good  to 
come." 

While  "things  were  developing"  Riley  bethought  him 
self  of  a  mistake  Walter  Scott  had  made  in  not  prais 
ing  the  Waverley  novels.  Scott's  silence  was  proof  to 
Edinburgh  that  he  wrote  them.  To  avert  a  like 
mistake  Riley  appeared  at  length  editorially  in 
his  own  paper, — not  however  till  the  knowing 
had  begun  to  think  upon  his  silence  with  suspicion, 
particularly  the  editor  of  the  rival  paper,  the  Herald, 
who  expected  "a  rhapsody  of  jealous  censure  from 
the  jaunty  sheet  across  the  way."  Under  the  caption, 
"The  Poet  Poe  in  Kokomo,"  Riley  considered  in  detail 


rt— 


DEMOCRAT  OFFICE 


ANDERSON  DEMOCRAT  OFFICE 


OLD  COTTAGE  ON  BOLIVAR  STRKKT 
Where  "Leon:iinie"  and  "The  Object  Lesson"  first  saw  the  light 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  381 

the  merits  and  the  faults  of  "Leonainie,"  occasionally 
deriding  the  "Poe-ish  pretensions"  and  their  claim  to 
verity.  He  quoted  from  the  "juicy  introduction"  (in 
the  Dispatch)  and  then  paid  his  compliments  to  the  en 
raptured  editor  who  had  gone  into  "voluminous  detail 
on  the  chance  discovery  of  the  manuscript  in  an  old 
book  now  in  possession  of  an  illiterate  resident  of  Ko- 
komo.  That  gentleman  states  that  his  grandpa  gave 
him  the  book  and  that  it  came  into  the  grandpa's  pos 
session  while  in  Chesterfield,  Virginia.  According  to 
the  story,  a  wild-eyed,  dissipated  young  man  had 
stopped  in  a  tavern  over  night  and  by  morning  had 
flown,  having  scrawled  in  the  old  book  over  the  initials 
E.  A.  P.,  a  curious  poem.  'Only  this  and  nothing 
more.' " 

Riley  frankly  admitted,  editorially,  that  on  reading 
the  Dispatch  he  was  inwardly  resolved  not  to  be  start 
led.  He  had  thought  to  ignore  "Leonainie"  entirely; 
but  "a  sense  of  justice  due — if  not  to  Poe,  to  the  poem" 
— induced  him  to  let  slip  a  few  remarks. 

"We  have  given  the  matter,"  he  continued,  "not  a 
little  thought !  and  in  what  we  shall  have  to  say  regard 
ing  it,  we  will  say  with  purpose  far  superior  to  preju 
dicial  motives,  and  with  the  earnest  effort  of  beating 
through  the  gloom  a  pathway  to  the  light  of  truth." 

Passing  by  "the  many  assailable  points  regarding  the 
birth  and  late  discovery  of  the  poem,"  he  considered 
first  the  authenticity  of  its  authorship.  "That  a  poem 
contains  some  literary  excellence,"  he  said,  "is  no  as 
surance  that  its  author  is  a  genius  known  to  fame,  for 
how  many  waifs  of  richest  worth  are  now  afloat  upon 
the  literary  sea,  whose  authors  are  unknown,  and  whose 
nameless  names  have  never  marked  the  graves  that  hid 
their  hidden  value  from  the  world.  Let  us  look  deeper 


382  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

down,  and  pierce  below  the  glare  and  gurgle  of  the  sur 
face  and  analyze  the  poem  and  Poe's  work  at  its  real 
worth." 

And  this,  Riley  proceeded  to  do.  The  theme  was  one 
that  Poe  would  not  likely  select.  "Poe  had  a  positive 
aversion  to  children,  and  especially  to  babies."  The 
second  stanza  contained  Poe's  peculiar  bent  of  thought 
but  in  addition  "that  weird  faculty  of  attractively  com 
bining  with  the  delicate  and  beautiful,  the  dread  and 
repulsive — a  power  most  rarely  manifest,  and  quite  be 
yond  the  bounds  of  imitation."  The  third  stanza  was 
secondary  in  thought  and  the  fourth  in  part  mediocre. 
It  was  fair  to  conclude,  since  "Poe  avoided  the  name  of 
Deity,"  that  he  did  not  write  the  last  stanza. 

"To  sum  up  the  poem  as  a  whole  we  are  at  some  loss," 
Riley  concluded.  "It  most  certainly  contains  rare  at 
tributes  of  grace  and  beauty ;  and  although  we  have  not 
the  temerity  to  accuse  the  gifted  Poe  of  its  authorship, 
for  equal  strength  of  reason  we  cannot  deny  that  it  is 
his  production ;  but  as  for  the  enthusiastic  editor  of  the 
Dispatch  we  are  not  inclined,  as  yet,  to  the  belief  that 
he  is  wholly  impervious  to  the  wiles  of  deception." 

There  was  a  flourish  of  county  paper  trumpets  in 
that  first  fortnight  of  August,  1877.  The  two  innocent 
deceivers  were  kept  wide  awake.  It  was  hurry  and 
hurrah.  As  Riley  put  it : 

"On  with  the  ruse !  let  fakes  be  unconfmed : 
No  sleep  till  morn  when  bards  and  critics  meet 
To  chase  the  flaming  hours  with  flying  feet." 

In  a  brief  note,  he  hopes  the  Dispatch  is  not  losing 
faith.  "God  bless  us,  we  are  certainly  at  the  very 
threshold  of  success.  Hold  the  fort !  If  we  could  talk 
for  one  square  hour  we  could  make  ourselves  believe  it." 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  383 

August  thirteenth  brought  another  letter  from  the  Dis 
patch.  "Your  two  letters  of  Saturday  received,"  wrote 
the  editor.  "I  would  like  to  visit  you  but  cannot  get 
away.  Have  you  seen  notice  in  New  York  World,  Tri 
bune,  Post;  Chicago  Tribune,  Inter-Ocean;  Cincinnati 
papers,  Courier  Journal?  I  am  saving  all  notices  and 
will  publish  them  next  week.  Your  notice  in  the  Demo 
crat  is  capital ;  so  is  Herald's  but  it  sounds  like  you  all 
over."  (The  editor  made  a  good  guess;  the  plot  was 
thickening.  It  was  Riley  all  over:  one  editor  of  the 
Herald  had  been  admitted  to  the  "ring  around  the  tor 
pedo.")  "Our  plot  is  developing  rapidly,"  the  Dispatch 
editor  continued ;  "the  ball  is  fairly  in  motion  and  will 
not  stop  until  it  has  reached  every  state  in  the  Union. 
No  article  was  ever  published  in  a  country  paper  in 
this  State  that  has  had  such  a  run  as  this  has  and  will 
have.  The  end  is  not  yet.  I  am  anxious  to  see  A tlantic, 
Scribner's,  and  so  forth.  They  are  the  critics.  Send 
all  extracts  you  find." 

August  sixteenth  the  Dispatch  had  just  received  a 
letter  from  William  F.  Gill  of  Boston,  who  had  written 
a  new  life  of  Poe.  Gill  had  the  manuscript  of  "The 
Bells"  and  could  identify  the  Kokomo  manuscript  by  it. 
"What  shall  I  write  him  ?"  asks  the  Dispatch.  "Where 
is  the  original  manuscript?  Notices  still  come  from  the 
South.  Send  me  all  your  clippings." 

Where  was  the  original  manuscript,  indeed  ?  In  the 
issue  of  August  sixteenth,  the  Dispatch  referred  to  the 
old  book  containing  the  manuscript,  inadvertently  say 
ing  that  "the  book — the  property  of  a  gentleman  of  this 
city — is  now  in  our  possession."  This,  Riley  good- 
naturedly  considered  "the  fatal  blunder  of  the  Dispatch 
editor."  Within  a  week  the  editor  discovered  that 
Riley,  swayed  by  an  old  tie  of  friendship  rather  than 


384  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

by  good  judgment,  had  admitted  to  the  "circle  of 
secrecy"  one  who  could  not  keep  a  secret.  That  was 
Riley's  "fatal  blunder,"  and  as  the  sequel  proved,  the 
"more  fatal  of  the  two." 

The  consequences  of  the  editor's  mistake  were  visited 
on  him  immediately.  There  was  no  manuscript.  Poe's 
biographer  offered  to  deposit  any  amount  in  Boston 
for  its  safe  return.  The  editor  turned  a  deaf  ear  to 
his  plea.  Representatives  from  the  city  dailies  wrote 
about  it  and  "literary  folks  called  in  droves  to  see  it." 
"What  shall  we  do?"  wailed  the  editor.  "Hold  them  off 
a  few  days  more,"  wrote  Riley.  "It  certainly  is  as  easy 
to  make  a  manuscript  as  it  was  to  write  the  poem  that 
creates  the  sensation." 

Then  there  was  a  stir  in  Anderson.  Two  friends,  W. 
J.  Ethell  and  Samuel  Richards,  who  were  never  far 
from  their  "jingling"  comrade  when  he  was  driven  into 
a  corner,  worked  unceasingly  on  a  manuscript,  imitat 
ing  Poe's  handwriting  from  a  facsimile  of  the  original 
manuscript  of  "The  Bells."  The  facsimile  did  not  con 
tain  all  the  letters  required  and  Richards,  who  made 
the  final  draft,  had  necessarily  to  do  some  inventing. 
And  he  did  it  well.  "In  some  way,"  said  Riley,  "my 
friend  caught  the  spirit  of  the  whole  vocabulary,  fur 
nishing  a  result  that  bewildered  many  notable  and  ex 
acting  critics."  Edmund  Clarence  Stedman  remarked 
that  it  was  the  best  imitation  of  Poe  he  had  seen.  Rich 
ards  copied  the  lines  on  the  fly  leaf  of  an  old  Ainsworth 
Dictionary  procured  from  a  law  office  and  bought  origi 
nally  at  a  second-hand  bookstore  on  Delaware  Street, 
Indianapolis.  This  done,  Riley  deftly  concealed  the  old 
book  in  brown  wrapping  paper  and  boarded  the  Pan 
Handle  accommodation  for  Kokomo.  "That  accommo 
dation,"  said  he,  "never  carried  a  more  restless  pas- 


AN 

ABRIDGMENT 


OP 


AINSWORTH'S  DICTIONARY, 

aatfn, 

DESIGNED  FOR  THE  USE  OF  SCHOOLS. 


THOMAS  MORELL,  D.  D. 

COBBECTED  AND   IMPROVED  FROM    THE    LAST 
E.ONDON  QUARTO    EDITION  BY    JOHN  CARET,  LL.    D. 


PHILADELPHIA: 

PUBLISHED  BY  URIAH  HUNT  &  SON, 
JVb.  44  JV.  Fourth  Street, 

AM9  FOK  SALS  BY  BOOKSELLERS  GENERALLY  THBOUGHOUT  ZHS 
STATES. 


286  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

senger.  I  was  so  fearful  of  detection,  a  shadow  scared 
me.  I  was  even  destitute  of  Dutch  courage. 

'Like  one  that  on  a  lonesome  road 

Doth  walk  in  fear  and  dread, 

And  having  once  turned  round  walks  on 

And  turns  no  more  his  head, 

Because  he  knows  a  frightful  fiend 

Doth  close  behind  him  tread/ 

A  thousand  things  I  thought  might  happen.  A  wag 
might  snatch  the  dictionary  from  me.  I  might  drop 
dead  of  apoplexy.  The  train  might  be  ditched  by  the 
Jabberwock  and  my  name  might  be  found  among  the 
dead.  The  brakeman  and  train-boy  might  bury  me  and 
my  old  book  on  the  spot.  There  was  some  consolation 
in  that.  That  would  be  a  bona  fide  secret.  Never  yet, 
so  history  shows,  has  the  grave  unsacked  a  feline." 

On  that  trip  to  Kokomo  Riley  began  to  note  what 
the  car  wheels  were  saying.  He  called  it  the  "agony 
of  the  rails."  All  the  way  over  they  repeated  the  du 
bious  refrain,  "How  fur  is  it  ? — how  fur  is  it  ? — how  fur 
is  it?"  Sometimes  that  refrain,  "stoical  and  relentless 
as  fate,  grew  so  agonizing  that  it  would  lift  him  from 
his  seat  and  drag  him  up  and  down  the  aisle." 

"Thirty-five  miles,"  said  Riley,  recalling  the  experi 
ence,  "and  every  mile  a  reach  of  torment."  Riley  had 
doubts  that  the  ruse  would  succeed  even  after  his 
friend  had  written  in  imitation  of  Poe's  hand.  This 
accounts  for  his  gloomy  state  of  feeling  on  the  way 
to  Kokomo. 

"One  day,"  said  Mr.  Henderson,  long  years  after, 
when  serving  his  commonwealth  as  auditor  of  state, 
"one  day  I  was  well-nigh  crazy  worrying  over  the  ab 
sence  of  the  manuscript.  It  was  a  hot  evening  and  I 
was  alone  in  the  Dispatch  office,  when  a  red-mustached, 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  387 

rough-looking  young  fellow,  far  from  the  sleek  literary 
man  he  is  to-day,  came  in  and  introduced  himself  as 
J.  W.  Riley.  That  was  our  first  meeting.  The  surprise 
was  mutual.  Both  expected  to  meet  an  older  man.  'The 
burden  is  fallen  from  me !'  I  exclaimed,  when  I  saw  that 
dictionary.  Well,  we  held  a  council  of  war.  Things 
were  moving  along  swimmingly.  I  remained  at  my 
desk ;  Riley  went  for  a  few  days'  rest  to  Greenfield." 

Before  leaving  Kokomo  Riley  made  a  call  on  his 
young  friend  of  the  Kokomo  Tribune,  Charles  Phillips. 

"What  are  you  doing  here  ?"  asked  Phillips. 

"Over  to  see  that  manuscript." 

"Bloomy  moonshine!"  returned  Phillips,  contemp 
tuously.  "They  have  no  manuscript.  Got  it  under 
lock  and  key,  I  suppose!"  he  added  with  withering 
irony. 

Riley  was  disinclined  to  talk  where  others  could 
hear.  "Have  you  a  room  where  we  could  be  alone?" 
he  whispered.  They  went  upstairs,  where,  on  entering 
a  room,  Riley  cautiously  looked  round,  peeped  into  the 
closet  and  locked  the  door  and  windows.  Each  moment 
Phillips'  curiosity  grew  less  controllable.  "I  don't  like 
these  flickerings  of  light  on  the  wall,"  said  Riley. 
"They  seem  to  take  the  shape  of  letters  and  words. 
Are  you  sure  no  one  can  hear?  Are  there  no  cracks 
in  the  wall?" 

Being  assured,  a  solemn  silence  followed — it  seemed, 
an  hour  to  Phillips — while  Riley  still  kept  peeping  here 
and  there  about  the  room.  Finally,  leaning  against  the 
wall — "a  picture  of  despair  with  tears  brimming  over 
his  eyelids," — he  said,  "I  came — I  came  all  the  way 
from  Anderson  to  see  that  manuscript."  Phillips 
thought  from  the  tone  of  disappointment  in  his  voice 
that  the  Dispatch  had  refused  to  let  him  see  it.  Sud- 


388  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

denly  advancing  to  Phillips,  he  whispered  with  meas 
ured  breath  and  slow — "They  have — they  have — yes, 
sir — they  have  the  manuscript." 

Then  he  went  into  details  concerning  the  authentic 
ity  of  the  poem.  The  Dispatch  should  guard  it  with 
jealous  care.  "The  dear  old  book/'  he  said,  "is  kept 
under  double  lock  and  key.  It  was  only  after  tearful 
pleadings  that  I  was  permitted  a  sight  of  it.  I  heaved 
a  sigh  of  relief  when  the  faded  volume  was  once  more 
locked  in  the  safe." 

"Leoloony — Leoloony,"  repeated  Phillips,  as  they  de 
scended  the  stairs.  "Leoloony,"  repeated  his  guest  at 
parting.  On  the  train  to  Greenfield  "Leoloony"  came 
prancing  from  Riley's  fancy  in  foolish  jingle: 

"Leoloony,  angels  called  her; 
And  they  took  the  bloom 
Of  the  tickled  stars  and  walled  her 
In  her  nom  de  plume." 

"How  this  world  is  given  to  lying !"  remarked  Phil 
lips,  a  few  days  later  when  he  discovered  the  real 
situation.  Recalling  those  artificial  tears,  and  the 
night  and  the  noiseless  presence  of  invisible  spectators, 
he  thought  Riley  should  seek  his  fortune  on  the  stage. 
"He  could  make,"  said  Phillips,  "one  of  the  matchless 
actors  of  his  time." 

While  Riley  was  recruiting  at  Greenfield,  the  Dis- 
.patch  was  living  in  clover.  The  editor  had  full  pos 
session  of  the  field.  Each  day  brought  "fresh  evidence 
of  success.  The  New  York  Herald  had  nibbled,  and 
the  New  York  Sun.  Sailing  before  the  wind,  'Leonai- 
nie'  was  destined  to  see  and  be  known  in  distant  lands." 
Whether  favorably  or  unfavorably  known  was  not 
nearly  so  important  as  to  make  the  "big  dailies  stand 
on  their  heads  and  bark  furiously."  "A  new-found 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  389 

poem,"  said  the  Nashville  American,  "has  been  charged 
to  Edgar  A.  Poe.  If  that  gentleman  ever  wanders  any 
where  in  spirit,  he  will  surely  pay  his  respects  to  the 
scalp  of  the  Indiana  man  that  wrote  it."  "The  poem 
bears  no  internal  evidence  of  Poe's  paternity,"  said  the 
Indianapolis  News.  "Romantic  enough,"  said  the 
Brooklyn  Eagle, — "looks  altogether  like  romance.  The 
story  is  wild  enough  to  have  been  written  under  the 
influence  of  Egyptian  whiskey."  "The  unfortunate 
Poe,"  said  the  Baltimore  American,  "was  doubtless 
guilty  of  many  indiscretions,  but  it  is  hard  to  suppose 
that  in  his  most  eccentric  moods  he  would  have  at 
tempted  to  foster  upon  his  fame  the  name  of  'Leonai- 
nie.'  "  "A  poem  is  going  the  rounds  of  the  press,"  said 
the  Philadelphia  Commonwealth,  "having  been  discov 
ered  among  the  rubbish  of  a  Hoosier  literary  club  by 
a  lunatic  of  Kokomo.  Two  or  three  lines  will  show  its 
spirit  and  style : 

'And  they  made  her  hair  of  gloomy 
Midnight,  and  her  eyes  of  bloomy 
Moonshine,  and  they  brought  her  to  me 
In  the  solemn  night/ 

The  gin  mills  of  Maryland  and  the  Old  Dominion  never 
turned  out  liquor  bad  enough  to  debase  the  genius  of 
Poe  to  the  level  of  that  verse.  It  is  a  libel  on  his 
memory  to  hint  of  such  doleful  idiocy." 

The  big  dailies  did  "bark  furiously" — no  doubt  of 
that.  From  Boston  through  Washington  to  Mobile  and 
New  Orleans,  and  back  through  Richmond  and  across 
the  continent  to  San  Francisco,  the  comment  was  about 
equally  divided  between  hisses  and  applause. 

"Abusive,  insinuating,  malevolent,"  observes  the 
reader.  Precisely  so,  and  precisely  the  thing  required. 
The  hammering  process  is  as  essential  in  the  evolution 


390  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

of  a  poet  as  in  the  making  of  a  soldier.  "We  say  words 
in  the  moonlight,"  said  the  soldierly  Myron  Reed,  "that 
we  do  not  stand  up  to  in  the  daytime.  When  the  band 
plays  and  there  is  cheering  and  the  girls  are  waving 
handkerchiefs,  it  is  easy  to  enlist  'f or  three  years  or  the 
war' ;  but  afterwards,  south  of  the  Ohio,  plugging  along 
in  the  mud — that  is  different."  It  was  one  thing  for 
Riley  to  receive  applause, — but  hisses  were  different. 
Nevertheless  they  were  decisive  factors.  They  were 
the  test.  If  he  could  withstand  them  he  might  be 
worthy  of  renown.  The  author  of  "Leonainie"  had 
much  to  say  about  the  "sublime  satisfaction  and  proud 
complacency"  of  the  critic.  Yet  that  despised  critic 
was  a  means  of  making  him  serviceable  to  mankind. 
The  critic  hammers  the  self-sufficiency  out  of  young 
writers. 

While  gathering  poems  for  another  book,  he  was 
inclined  to  rewrite  "Leonainie"  before  including  it 
in  the  volume;  but,  "since  the  nimbus  round  it,"  as 
he  said,  "is  historical  rather  than  poetical,"  he  finally 
permitted  the  lines  to  remain  as  they  were  originally 
written. 

Many  newspapers  charged  the  paternity  of  "Leo 
nainie"  to  the  editor  of  the  Dispatch.  "They 
do  me  too  much  honor,"  retorted  the  editor.  "The 
furor  is  in  its  incipiency,"  he  said  editorially 
August  twenty-third.  "The  poem  is  traveling 
on  the  wind.  The  ablest  critics  of  the  land  have 
leveled  their  lenses  upon  it.  If  we  have  been  the 
victim  of  a  deception,  we  are  willing  as  anybody  to 
know  it.  We  believe  in  the  paternity  of  the  poem  and 
can  wait  with  complacency  the  verdict  of  the  reading 
public.  The  original  manuscript  together  with  the  book 
from  which  the  leaves  were  torn  is  now  in  our  posses- 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  391 

sion.  The  book  is  one  of  an  old  edition  of  Ainsworth's 
Dictionary,  considerably  time-worn.  The  poem  is  writ 
ten  in  pale  ink  of  a  bluish  tinge  on  the  fly  leaf  taken 
from  the  back  of  the  book.  The  chirography  is  remark 
ably  clear  and  can  be  read  as  easily  as  print.  Of  course 
it  is  somewhat  dimmed  by  time  and  exposure.  It  is 
written  on  both  pages  of  a  single  leaf.  The  manuscript 
will  be  sent  East  to  critics  for  examination  and  judg 
ment.  The  poem  is  indeed  remarkable,  and  its  acci 
dental  discovery  is  a  valuable  contribution  to  Ameri 
can  literature." 

While  Riley  was  resting  at  Greenfield  things  were  de 
veloping  over  at  Anderson.  An  event  there  that  con 
cerns  the  issue  of  the  Poe-Poem  venture  was  the  con 
versation  of  two  men  on  Sunday  night,  August  19, 1877. 
They  had  entered  the  corner  of  the  Court  House  yard 
and  seated  themselves  under  a  Carolina  poplar.  They 
had  been  talking  very  earnestly  at  the  restaurant. 
As  Riley  said,  "they  had  thawed  their  grief  with 
steaming  coffee  and  their  hearts  had  grown  warm  over 
their  woes."  He  went  on  to  describe  their  surround 
ings  and  the  night.  "The  people,"  he  said,  "were  home 
from  church  with  the  supreme  satisfaction  that  attends 
tired  pilgrims  at  the  close  of  the  sweet  day  of  rest. 
Lovers  were  cooing  quietly  in  pleasant  hiding-places 
and  old  folks  were  dreaming  of  toll-gates  and  splint- 
bottomed  chairs.  The  alleys  were  fragrant  with  tin 
cans  and  virtuous  herbs.  The  leaves  and  flowers,  birds 
and  beasts,  and  creeping  things  in  the  grass  and  on 
the  back  porch  were  performing  their  functions  in  the 
usual  manner.  At  the  edge  of  town  the  broad  expanse 
of  cornfields  stretched  away  to  the  purple  woods,  and 
in  the  distance  the  solar  system  worked  respectfully  at 
its  appointed  task." 


392  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

The  two  men  under  the  Carolina  poplar  were  James 
McClanahan  and  Stephen  Metcalf,  one  of  the  proprie 
tors  of  the  Anderson  Herald.  "The  time  has  come  for 
this  bubble  to  burst,"  said  McClanahan,  referring  to 
the  Poe  Poem — nine  simple  words  but  they  were 
charged  with  the  constituents  of  gunpowder.  They 
were  uttered  by  the  man  who  again  and  again  had 
signed  himself,  "Yours  forever,  European  Balsam."  He 
had  been  admitted  to  the  "circle  of  secrecy"  around  the 
literary  torpedo  and  could  no  longer  keep  the  secret. 
"The  dear  boy !"  how  came  he  to  break  the  seal  of  con 
fidence  ?  How  came  he  to  drop  a  firebrand  on  the  path 
of  "the  dearest  friend  he  had  on  earth" — he  who  had 
found  that  friend  a  luckless  disconsolate  in  overalls 
and  bowled  away  with  him  to  a  legendary  world — who 
had  wandered  with  him  up  hill  and  down  dale  in  search 
of  the  Golden  Fleece — who  had  drifted  away  to  the 
Wisconsin  woods  and  brought  him  tidings  of  the 
"Golden  Girl" — how  came  he  in  the  tense  moments  of 
a  hapless  venture  to  be  disobedient  to  a  trust?  "No 
body  knows,"  said  an  intimate  friend,  "but  him  and 
the  'Sphinx'  and  neither  is  saying  anything."  It  is  an 
unraveled  riddle.  There  was  a  ratchet  loose  somewhere 
but  certain  it  is  that  the  Graphic  Chum  did  not  disobey 
his  trust  maliciously.  Riley  was  not  embittered  by  the 
part  he  played.  "We  are  friends,"  he  said,  "and  will 
be  in  the  Dim  Unknown." 

The  hour  had  struck  for  the  Anderson  Herald.  For 
weeks  it  had  been  chaffing  over  the  success  of  the 
Democrat.  Its  subscription  list  had  suffered  from  the 
popularity  of  the  "Jingling  Editor."  At  last  it  had  a 
journalistic  "scoop"  with  dimensions.  The  time  had 
come  for  it  to  "lash  its  rival  with  its  lighting."  Mon- 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  393 

day  morning  the  "secret"  was  walking  up  and  down 
the  streets.  There  was  an  envious  chatter  among  com 
positors  in  the  Herald  composing  room — 

"Sockety — hockety — wockety  wump — 
Pillikum — pollikum — plumpty  pump." 

"Your  Poe  Poem  has  assumed  a  new  phase  here," 
wrote  the  faithful  William  M.  Groan  of  the  Democrat. 
"The  Herald  has  just  got  wind  of  it  and  swears  it  will 
expose  the  entire  thing  in  coming  issue.  I  write  you 
as  a  friend  warning  you  of  the  danger." 

Groan's  warning  reached  Riley  Monday  night.  At 
first  he  was  dizzy  over  the  threatened  revelation.  He 
could  not  realize  it.  "And  this  is  life,  I  believe.  Oh, 
certainly.  Why  not?"  he  muttered  to  himself  in  the 
mock-heroic  way  of  Dick  Swiveller.  As  the  hours 
wore  on  to  midnight  the  complications  over 
whelmed  him.  He  and  his  friends  had  striven 
strenuously.  He  thought  of  the  two  weeks  past  as 
a  perilous  chariot  drawn  by  a  double  span  of 
horses  and  driven  by  an  orphan.  A  master  hand 
would  have  driven  a  winning  race.  Now  the  horses' 
legs  were  outside  the  traces  and  they  were  pulling  and 
twisting  every  which  way.  Just  my  luck,  thought  he ; 
"the  cat's  away  and  the  mice  they  play;  the  frost 
breaks  up  and  the  water  runs.  Edgar  Allan  Poe" — he 
moaned  dolefully — "just  thirteen  letters — unlucky  for 
Poe — unlucky  for  everything  connected  with  him." 

The  opportune  moment  having  arrived,  the  expose 
was  sprung, — but  not  in  the  Herald,  as  the  Democrat 
expected.  The  Herald  proprietor  could  not  make 
his  threat  good.  One  of  his  associates — the  "rival 
editor"  in  the  war  of  words  that  preceded  Riley's  de- 


394  JAMES  WHITCOMB  PJLEY 

cision  to  test  his  theory — in  some  unaccountable  man 
ner  had  been  admitted  to  the  "ring  around  the  torpedo." 
While  he  freely  hammered  the  "Jingling  Poet,"  he 
would  not  carry  his  cudgeling  to  the  breach  of  a  trust. 
Though  "cold  and  metallic  in  face,"  said  Riley,  "his 
heart  was  soft  and  warm  as  the  heart  of  youth."  The 
Herald  therefore  had  to  content  itself  with  sending  the 
expose  to  its  friendly  neighbor,  the  Kokomo  Tribune, 
which,  according  to  its  rival,  the  Dispatch,  "jumped 
for  the  sensation  as  a  bullfrog  would  leap  for  a  red 
flannel  bait." 

The  Herald  quoted  its  friendly  contemporary  with 
ghoulish  glee:  "Upon  our  first  page,"  it  said  editori 
ally,  "we  present  the  Tribune's  exposure  of  the  poetical 
fraud  'Leonainie.'  We  are  sorry  that  Mr.  J.  W.  Riley 
should  have  proven  himself  so  mendacious,  and  s.orrier 
still  that  he  is  the  author  of  the  poem.  We  might  have 
forgiven  him  his  want  of  veracity  but  it  is  hard  to 
condone  'Leonainie.' " 

The  expose  was  of  course  a  feat  for  the  newspapers. 
It  was  not  "the  little  stir  among  the  state  exchanges," 
which  Riley  anticipated  when  he  launched  the  venture. 
The  critics  began  to  "erupt  volcanically." 

The  exchanges  had  a  great  deal  to  say  about  "a  lit 
erary  forgery,"  and  the  dead  Poe,  the  "chief  victim," 
who  was  powerless  to  avenge  the  wrong  done  his  name 
and  honor.  As  they  saw  it,  the  Poe  Poem  and  the 
"verse  carpenter"  who  wrote  it,  deserved  the  oppro 
brium  heaped  upon  them.  Saucy  weeklies  talked  volu 
bly  about  "a  great  fraud,"  "insufferable  nonsense,"  the 
"unscrupulous  young  man,"  and  "an  exceedingly  fool 
ish  piece  of  criminality."  A  Detroit  daily  regretted  that 
the  American  people  had  been  deluded  into  the  idea 
that  there  really  does  exist  in  Indiana  a  place  by  the 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  395 

name  of  Kokomo.  "The  poem,"  said  a  New  York  daily, 
"effectually  sets  at  rest  whatever  suspicion  there  may 
have  been  that  the  author  had  the  material  out  of  which 
a  poet  is  made."  Many  journals  saw  "an  impassable 
gulf"  between  Riley  and  fame.  "A  brilliant  career  had 
been  blighted  and  forever  lost  to  the  literary  world." 

When  abuse  had  run  its  course,  the  Kokomo  Dispatch 
summed  up  the  situation  as  follows : — 

"Our  object  in  the  ruse  was  two-fold,  both  of  which 
have  been  accomplished:  First,  to  perpetuate  a  quiet 
pleasant  joke,  which  we  would  afterward  explain;  sec 
ond,  to  give  Mr.  Riley's  genius  as  a  poet  a  fair,  full 
and  impartial  test  before  the  ablest  critics  in  the  land, 
uninfluenced  by  local  prejudice  or  sectional  bias.  The 
only  fiction  about  the  transaction  was  the  Poe  story. 
The  poem  possesses  a  vast  deal  of  merit,  and  would  do 
no  violence  to  the  reputation  of  our  more  pretentious 
bards  of  today.  Although  it  has  been  roughly  criticized 
in  certain  quarters,  it  has  been  praised  as  the  work  of 
genius  in  others.  No  poem  ever  passed  through  a  more 
relentless  gauntlet  of  criticism.  None  has  ever  had  a 
more  general  reproduction  by  the  press.  Mr.  Riley  is 
a  young  poet  of  great  promise  and  will  we  predict  yet 
make  his  mark  as  one  of  the  sweetest  singers  of  the 
age." 

In  the  hopeful  meantime — although  it  seemed  hope 
less — what  was  the  fate  of  the  "Verse  Carpenter"  ?  To 
give  a  fanciful  turn  to  a  fanciful  incident,  as  related  by 
his  comrade  Nye,  the  literary  fledgling  had  leaned  from 
his  high  chair  far  out  to  catch  a  dainty,  gilded  butter 
fly,  and  lost  his  footing  and  with  a  piercing  shriek  had 
fallen  headlong  to  the  gravel  walk  below ;  and  when  he 
was  picked  up,  he  was — he  was  a  poet.  But  he  was  a 
poet  caught  in  the  arms  of  doom.  Instead  of  drifting 


396  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

away  from  him  like  a  dream,  "Leonainie"  had  returned, 
the  enfant  terrible. 

The  depth  of  despair  into  which  the  poet  was 
plunged  by  the  wave  of  criticism  and  reproach  and  its 
effect  on  his  conduct  and  literary  output  are  reserved 
for  the  next  chapter. 

Said  Riley,  years  after  the  exposure,  "The  tirade 
and  outcries  are  all  smiling  material  now,  but  then 
they  were  pathos  from  away-back." 

"That  fly  leaf !"  he  once  protested,  plucking  the  nettle 
from  his  past,  "how  the  woof  of  my  destiny  has  been 
warped  around  that.  When  a  schoolboy  I  wrote  my 
name  on  a  fly  leaf  of  an  old  reader  with  enough  extra 
flourish  at  the  bottom  for  a  lasso,  wrote  it  with  dreamy 
speculations  of  the  sensation  it  would  some  day  create 
beneath  a  picture  of  myself  in  a  cocked  hat,  a  plume, 
and  a  ruffled  collar — such  as  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  wore, 
don't  you  know.  Well,  the  extra  flourish  and  sensation 
came  when  the  'Famous  Fake*  went  bounding  through 
the  land.  I  came  so  perilously  near  losing  my  pelt  then 
that  I  have  been  scared  from  A.  to  Izzard  ever  since." 

After  the  whirlwind  of  comments  on  "Leonainie," 
"posthumous  poetry"  was  the  talk  of  the  time.  Re 
porters  went  prowling  round  neighborhoods  in  search 
of  clues  to  mysteries,  and  when  they  could  not  find 
them,  they  invented  them.  An  unpublished  poem  by 
Bret  Harte  was  found  at  Effingham,  Illinois,  while  car 
penters  were  tearing  down  an  old  schoolhouse.  The 
poem,  it  was  said,  was  written  on  narrow  strips  of 
manila  wrapping  paper,  in  Harte's  well-known  femi 
nine  hand.  The  author  had  passed  that  way  while 
walking  from  San  Francisco  to  New  York,  and  de 
posited  the  poem  in  the  schoolhouse  wall.  Another 
posthumous  production  was  found  on  a  headstone  in 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  397 

Iowa.  Still  another  in  Virginia — "a  poetic  fragment 
written  with  chalk  on  the  inside  of  a  barn  door."  Puck 
entertained  its  readers  with  "some  more  bloomy  moon 
shine  poetry  by  the  late  author  of  the  'Raven/  "  A 
fisherman  with  a  magnifying-glass  described  strange 
hieroglyphics  on  a  turtle  shell  on  the  banks  of  the 
Wabash — "unquestionably  the  last  work  of  the  gifted 
but  erratic  Poe." 

"My  friends  want  to  know  my  feelings,"  said  Riley 
in  later  years.  "I  refer  them  to  Mr.  Jobling,  who 
saw  the  storm  break  on  the  Western  Road  out  of 
London.  It  was  the  most  dismal  period  of  my  life. 
The  Democrat  said  I  was  rusticating  a  few  days  at 
Greenfield.  I  was  abdicating.  My  tinsel  throne  was 
crumbling.  Friends  stood  aside — went  round  the  other 
way.  I  went  out  on  the  porch  and  sighed  like  a  wet 
forestick.  Even  the  pump  was  disinclined  to  welcome 
my  return.  Over  at  Anderson  I  saw  myself  walking 
alone  around  the  Court  House  square  at  night  through 
the  drizzle  and  rain,  peering  longingly  at  the  dim  light 
in  the  office  where  I  sometimes  slept.  Hearts  in  there 
were  as  hard  and  dark  and  obdurate  as  the  towel  in 
the  composing  room.  In  those  hot  silent  nights  I  saw 
the  lightning  quiver  on  the  black  horizon ;  I  heard  hol 
low  murmurings  in  the  wind.  Within  a  week  I  was 
encysted  in  pitchy  darkness.  The  lightning  was  not  an 
optical  illusion.  It  was  at  hand,  crooked,  dazzling  and 
resentful.  The  rain  poured  down  like  Heaven's  wrath. 
Every  trembling,  vivid,  flickering  instant  I  breathed 
in  horror  of  impending  doom." 

When  traveling  with  his  friend  Nye,  a  decade  later, 
time  had  so  mollified  his  heartache  that  Riley  could  joke 
about  it.  He  once  drew  a  pen  and  ink  sketch  of  himself 
chasing  his  hat  in  the  wind.  With  one  hand  he  clutched 


398  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

his  "reticule"  of  poems ;  with  the  other  he  clung  to  an 
umbrella  turned  wrong  side  out  by  the  gale.  Both  man 
and  hat  were  pursued  by  the  wrath  of  critics — and  the 
rain.  "Oh  the  rain !"  he  would  solemnly  repeat  to  Nye, 

"The  rain !  the  rain !  the  rain ! — 
Pouring  with  never  a  pause, 
Over  the  fields  and  green  byways— - 
How  beautiful  it  was !" 

In  the  midst  of  all  the  noise  and  distraction  of  his 
Poe-Poem  days,  there  was  one  thing  if  nothing  else  that 
was  perfectly  clear  and  that  was  that  the  detractors 
who  prophesied  oblivion  for  the  "Verse  Carpenter," 
knew  nothing  about  it.  His  future  was  not  in  their 
keeping.  In  those  hours  of  darkness,  the  winds  alone 
were  his  messengers.  Occasionally  he  was  soothed  by 
the  whisperings  of  a  gentle  zephyr,  but  for  the  most 
part  the  visitations  came  in  squalls.  "I  am  the  Wind," 
he  made  the  wind  say  in  a  poem  he  was  then  writing 
for  the  Kokomo  Dispatch, 

"I  am  the  Wind,  and  I  rule  mankind, 
And  I  hold  a  sovereign  reign 
Over  the  lands  as  God  designed, 
And  the  waters  they  contain : 
Lo !  the  bound  of  the  wide  world  round 
Falleth  in  my  domain." 

There  came  the  last  week  of  August  a  ray  of  com 
fort  from  an  accomplished  young  woman  of  Anderson, 
Miss  Jessie  Fremont  Myers — afterward  Mrs.  William 
M.  Groan — a  prediction  that,  in  the  light  of  subsequent 
events,  may  be  set  over  against  all  the  mouthings 
of  his  detractors.  "I  am  indeed  sorry,"  she  wrote, 
"that  your  plan,  contrived  without  a  single  dishonor 
able  thought  or  motive,  has  received  such  an  unmanly 


THE  LITERARY  TORPEDO  399 

blow  just  as  it  is  smiling  into  perfection.  But  I  can 
not  agree  with  the  Tribune  that  it  will  result  in  any 
serious  damage  to  you  for  I  still  believe  that  the  true 
votaries  of  genius  will  still  yield  you  homage  and  that 
the  laurel  wreath  fame  was  twining  for  your  brow,  will 
adorn  it  as  if  'Leonainie'  had  never  been  written." 

At  Anderson  also  there  was  a  whisper  of  hope  from 
the  Artist  Comrade — and  a  bit  of  wisdom  from  a 
banker,  John  W.  Pence.  "There,  Little  Man,"  said  the 
banker,  "don't  cry;  the  future  is  before  you;  go  to 
work."  "The  day  is  coming,"  said  the  artist  to  a 
friend,  "when  we  will  be  proud  we  were  friends  of 
Riley.  His  poems  have  the  true  ring — he  is  bound  to 
come  to  the  front."  Mrs.  Jordan  of  the  Richmond  In 
dependent  wrote  some  hopeful  words  about  the  poetic 
waif  born  in  the  corner  of  an  obscure  paper,  that  was 
being  so  mysteriously  wafted  to  periodicals  beyond  the 
sea.  "Count  me  an  ardent  admirer  of  the  lamented 
Poe,"  she  said.  "Let  us  do  what  we  can  to  honor  the 
genius  of  the  great  departed." 

"After  sorrowing  and  parboiling  for  a  fortnight," 
said  Riley,  "I  resolved  to  make  a  clean  breast  of  the 
whole  thing."  Accordingly  the  following : 

Greenfield,  Indiana,  August  29,  1877. 
Editor  of  Indianapolis  Journal, 
Dear  Sir : 

Will  you  do  me  the  especial  favor  of  publishing  the 
enclosed  in  your  issue  of  to-morrow?  Very  truly, 

J.  W.  RILEY. 

The  enclosure  was  his  "Card  to  the  Public."  The 
Journal,  however,  like  all  other  papers,  after  the  ex 
pose,  was  not  certain  of  the  card's  authenticity.  Riley's 
own  handwriting  was  questioned.  On  the  morrow  they 
published  the  request  as : 


400  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 


THE  ALLEGED  POE-POEM  CARD  FROM  MR.  J.  W.  RILEY. 
To  the  Public: 

Having  been  publicly  accused  of  the  authorship  of 
the  poem,  "Leonainie,"  and  again  of  the  far  more  griev 
ous  error  of  an  attempt  to  falsely  claim  it,  I  deem  it 
proper  to  acknowledge  the  justice  of  the  first  accusa 
tion.  Yes,  as  much  as  I  regret  to  say  it,  I  am  the 
author;  but  in  justice  to  the  paper  that  originally  pro 
duced  it,  and  to  myself  as  well,  I  desire  to  say  a  few 
words  more. 

The  plan  of  the  deception  was  originally  suggested  to 
me  by  a  controversy  with  friends,  in  which  I  was  fool 
ish  enough  to  assert  that  "no  matter  the  little  worth  of 
a  poem,  if  a  great  author's  name  was  attached,  it  would 
be  certain  of  success  and  popularity."  And  to  establish 
the  truth  of  this  proposition  I  was  unfortunate  enough 
to  select  a  ruse,  that,  although  establishing  my  theory, 
has  been  the  means  of  placing  me  in  a  false  light,  as 
well  as  those  of  my  friends  who  were  good  enough  to 
assist  me  in  the  scheme ;  for  when  we  found  our  literary 
bombshell  bounding  throughout  the  length  and  breadth 
of  the  Union  we  were  so  bewildered  and  involved  we 
knew  not  how  to  act.  Our  only  intercourse  had  been 
by  post,  and  we  could  not  advise  together  fairly  in  that 
way ;  in  consequence,  a  fibrous  growth  of  circumstances 
had  chained  us  in  a  manner,  and  a  fear  of  unjust  cen 
sure  combined  to  hold  us  silent  for  so  long.  To  find 
at  last  a  jocular  explosion  of  the  fraud,  we  thought 
lessly  employed  a  means  both  ill-advised  for  ourselves 
and  others.  And  now,  trusting  the  public  will  only  con 
demn  me  for  the  folly,  and  hold  me  blameless  of  all 
dishonorable  motives  wherein  I  have  feigned  ignorance 
of  the  real  authorship  of  the  poem,  and  so  forth,  and 
so  forth, 

I  am  yours  truly, 

J.  W.  RILEY. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

WEATHERING  THE  STORM 

THERE  is  a  classic  allusion  to  Arion  which  typi 
fies  Riley's  fate  the  first  fortnight  of  September, 
1877.     Most  provident  in  peril,  says  Shake 
speare  in  praise  of  his  hero, 

"He  bound  himself 

(Courage  and  hope  both  teaching  him  the  practice) 
To  a  strong  mast  that  liv'd  upon  the  sea ; 
Where  like  Arion  on  the  dolphin's  back, 
He  held  acquaintance  with  the  waves, 
So  long  as  I  could  see." 

The  Foe-Poem  ruse  had  failed  and  the  expose*  had 
plunged  Riley  into  a  sea  of  despair.  He  was  literally 
holding  acquaintance  with  waves  and  winds.  He  had 
been  the  victim  of  one  of  those  vulgar  accidents  of  life, 
according  to  Lord  Beaconsfield,  that  should  be  borne 
without  a  murmur.  He  did  not  bear  it  without  a  mur 
mur,  but  he  did  bear  it.  He  did  not  sink  beneath  the 
weight  of  woe. 

It  was  all  laughing  material  years  after  when  the 
experience  was  "dramatized"  in  a  cartoon  for  Nye  and 
Riley's  Railway  Guide — the  Hoosier  Poet  riding  on 
the  dolphin's  back,  with  a  golden  wreath  on  his  brow, 
a  lyre  in  his  arms  and  a  tunic  flowing  in  the  wind  from 
his  shoulders — all  merry-making  then,  but  at  the  time 
the  ordeal,  in  Riley's  words,  "was  a  fortnight  of  woe  for 
the  infernal  gods."  All  that  remained  of  his  fatal  ven 
ture  seemed  a  barren  waste  surrounded  by  desolation. 

401 


402  JAMES  WIIITCOMB  RILEY 

The  "fortnight  of  woe"  explains  the  allusion  to  Riley 
as  the  "Arion  of  Grief."  His  fate  did  indeed  rhyme 
with  the  narrative  in  the  Age  of  Fable.  Like  Arion  he 
was  a  musician  and  a  great  favorite.  He  longed  for 
recognition  in  the  East.  Friends  besought  him  to  be 
content : 

"Stay  where  you  are." 

"Stay  on  the  Democrat." 

"Paint  signs." 

His  answer  tallied  substantially  with  that  in  the 
fable.  He  longed  to  make  his  gift  a  source  of  pleasure 
to  others,  and  the  conviction  had  been  borne  in  upon 
him  that  he  could  do  it  with  song. 

That  period  of  gloom  like  many  other  seasons  of 
darkness,  was  brimming  with  possibilities — proof  once 
more  that  "man's  extremity  is  God's  opportunity." 
Out  of  it  came  a  lyric — "We  Are  Not  Always  Glad 
When  We  Smile" — that  in  beauty  of  pathos  has  few 
rivals  in  the  English  tongue — another  instance  that 
our  laughter 

"With  some  pain  is  fraught; 

Our  sweetest  songs  are  those  that  tell  of  saddest 
thought." 

How  could  Riley  be  so  gay  while  his  heart  was  in 
mourning?  How  could  he  smile  and  even  laugh  when 
he  felt  that,  for  him,  the  end  of  all  earthly  happiness 
had  come?  Hear  him — 

"We  are  not  always  glad  when  we  smile, — 
For  the  heart  in  a  tempest  of  pain, 
May  live  in  the  guise 
Of  a  smile  in  the  eyes 
As  a  rainbow  may  live  in  the  rain : 
And  the  stormiest  night  of  our  woe 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  403 

May  hang  out  a  radiant  star 

Whose  light  in  the  sky 

Of  despair  is  a  lie 
As  black  as  the  thunderclouds  are. 

"We  are  not  always  glad  when  we  smile : 
Though  we  wear  a  fair  face  and  are  gay, 

And  the  world  we  deceive 

May  not  ever  believe 
We  could  laugh  in  a  happier  way. 
Yet,  down  in  the  deeps  of  the  soul, 
Oftymes  with  our  faces  aglow, 

There's  an  ache  and  a  moan 

That  we  know  of  alone, 
And  as  only  the  hopeless  may  know." 

Such  is  a  glimpse  of  his  woe  in  verse.  He  also  writes 
of  it  in  the  following  letter  to  a  woman  he  dearly 
loved,  the  Lady  of  Tears  he  sometimes  called  her  when 
he  thought  of  the  sorrow  in  her  life,  Miss  Eudora  Kate 
Myers  of  Anderson — afterward  Mrs.  William  J. 
Kinsley — » 

Greenfield,  Indiana,  September  15, 1877. 
Dear  Woman: 

Your  letter  of  yesterday  does  me  a  world  of  good,  for 
although  it  hurt  in  many  ways,  it  showed  me  still  the 
great  strength  of  your  love,  and  with  so  great  a  treas 
ure  in  my  keeping  must  I  not  be  strong  and  brave  to 
meet  all  the  ills  with  true  manliness,  and  not  with  the 
coward  heart  I  have  shown  for  so  long.  You  find  fault 
with  me  for  not  telling  you  my  trouble,  and  saying  I 
am  not  satisfied  with  your  love.  You  do  me  wrong — 
indeed  you  do !  My  love  for  you  is  so  great  that  I  have 
tried  to  hold  from  you  only  that  which  would  give 
you  extra  pain  to  know  and  God  knows  I  give  you 
misery  enough.  Look  up  here  in  my  face  and  read  the 
last  week's  misery  I  have  passed  and  you  will  not  offer 
me  a  chiding  word.  I  have  walked  down — down  in 
hell  so  far  that  your  dear  voice  had  almost  failed  to 
reach  me,  but  thank  God  I  can  hear  you,  though  I 


404  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

may  not  touch  your  hand  till  I  have  washed  my  own 
in  tears  of  repentance.  My  steps  are  turning  gladly 
toward  the  light,  and  it  seems  to  me  sometimes  I  al 
most  see  God's  face.  I  have  been  sick — sick  of  the 
soul,  for  had  so  fierce  a  malady  attacked  the  body,  I 
would  have  died  with  all  hell  hugged  in  my  arms.  I 
can  speak  of  this  now  because  I  can  tell  you  I  am 
saved,  and  my  noble  woman  will  be  filled  with  joy  to 
know  that  God  bends  down  and  listens  to  her  prayers. 
In  fancy  now  my  arms  cling  round  you  as  the  pilgrim 
to  the  cross,  and  through  a  storm  of  tears  the  sunshine 
of  your  smiles  breaks  on  me,  as  I  say, 

"The  burden  has  fallen  from  me — 
It  is  buried  in  the  sea, 
And  only  the  sorrow  of  others 
Throws  its  shadow  over  me." 

I  will  not  now  talk  longer  of  myself — there  is  no  end 
of  that,  and  I  shall  not  be  selfish  any  more  but  hum 
ble — very,  very  humble.  You  must  never  say  again 
you  are  not  worthy  of  my  love.  You  could  not  hurt 
me  deeper.  My  worth  compared  with  yours,  I  tell  you 
truly,  for  I  know,  "Is  as  moonlight  unto  sunlight  and  as 
water  unto  wine."  I'm  growing  better  though  and 
humbly  pray  that  God  may  brighten  up  the  poor  dim 
remnant  of  my  worth  that  it  at  last  may  shine  a  jewel 
of  one  lustre  with  your  own. 

How  inexpressibly  sorrowful  were  those  autumn 
weeks  of  1877,  when  alone  Riley  walked  among  the 
great  elms  on  the  banks  of  Brandywine,  when 

"The  long  black  shadows  of  the  trees 
Fell  o'er  him  like  their  destinies." 

The  leaves  "dropped  on  him  their  tears  of  dew."  At 
times  he  seemed  to  stand  on  a  beach  with  its  waste  of 
sands  before  him.  "I  could  hear  the  roar  of  breakers," 
he  said;  "low  clouds  brushed  by  me — just  solitude, 
wreck  and  ruin — nothing  more." 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  405 

It  does  seem  that  his  fate  was  to  be  "fanged  with 
frost  and  tongued  with  flame."  His  station  was  not 
to  be  the  tripod  of  the  Democrat,  nor  the  grind  of  any 
other  journalistic  field.  Like  his  King  of  Slumberland, 
his  dais  was  to  be  woven  of  rays  of  starlight  and 
jeweled  with  gems  of  dew,  and  sometimes  he  was  to 
occupy  a  throne  wrought  of  blackest  midnight.  He  was 
destined  to  hold  communion  with  those  mighty  phan 
toms,  Our  Ladies  of  Sorrow.  In  some  way  unknown 
to  the  average  mortal  the  poet  was  to  be  kept  in  touch 
with  the  deep  silence  that  reigns  in  their  kingdoms. 
One  shudders  at  the  sound  of  their  mysterious  words : — 
"Suffer  not  woman  and  her  tenderness  to  sit  near  him 
in  his  darkness.  Banish  the  frailties  of  hope;  wither 
the  relenting  of  love ;  scorch  the  fountain  of  tears.  So 
shall  he  be  accomplished  in  the  furnace ;  so  shall  he  see 
the  things  that  ought  not  to  be  seen,  sights  that  are 
abominable,  and  secrets  that  are  unutterable.  So  shall 
he  read  the  elder  truths,  fearful  truths.  So  shall  he 
rise  again  before  he  dies.  And  so  shall  our  commis 
sion  be  accomplished  which  from  God  we  had, — to 
plague  his  heart  until  we  had  unfolded  the  capacities 
of  his  spirit." 

"Every  man,"  said  Riley,  "has  his  dragon  as  well  as 
his  Daemon;  in  this,  sinner  and  saint  are  alike.  The 
shining  figure  of  the  Dsemon  precedes  him,  the  dragon 
dogs  his  footsteps.  I  have  my  dragon  and  thereby  is 
established  my  relation  to  mankind.  Doctor  Johnson 
had  his  and  I  take  it  that  is  one  reason  for  the  abiding 
interest  of  the  race  in  what  he  said  and  did."  In  that 
fortnight  immediately  following  the  expose,  the  poet 
was  not  only  suffering  from  the  torture  of  critics  and 
the  shattered  hope  of  literary  recognition.  His  heart 


406  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

was  also  breaking  over  a  lapse  from  sobriety.  His 
dragon  seized  and  shook  him  as  a  mastiff.  As  he  ex 
pressed  it,  he  was  "fighting  another  battle  with  the  blue 
flame."  The  channels  of  his  thought  had  been  obscured 
and  his  progress  imperiled  by  his  "besetting  sin." 
"Friends  offered  sympathy,"  he  said ;  "how  could  they 
sympathize  when  their  souls  had  not  been  bruised  with 
adversity?  They  had  not  been  steeped  to  the  lips  in 
misery;  they  had  not  seen  their  fondest  hopes  perish; 
they  had  not  bared  their  faces  on  the  earth  at  night; 
they  had  not  suffered  the  pangs  of  humiliation.  What 
could  they  know — • 

'Of  the  frenzy  and  fire  of  the  brain, 
That  grasps  at  the  fruitage  forbidden'? 

There  are  hours  in  the  battle  with  this  disease  when  a 
man  can  breathe  no  prayer,  nor  utter  a  cry,  hours 
when  he 

'Bends  and  sinks  like  a  column  of  sand 
In  the  whirlwind  of  his  great  despair.' ' 

Carlyle  points  out  that  David,  the  Hebrew  King,  was 
a  man  of  blackest  crimes,  "no  want  of  sins,  yet  he  was 
the  man  according  to  God's  own  heart."  He  had 
learned  the  significance  of  sackcloth  and  ashes.  "Of  all 
acts,"  says  the  author,  "is  not,  for  a  man,  repentance 
the  most  divine  ?  What  are  faults,"  he  asks,  "what  are 
the  outward  details  of  a  life ;  if  the  inner  secret  of  it, 
the  remorse,  temptations,  true,  often-baffled,  never- 
ended  struggle  of  it,  be  forgotten?"  What  is  a  man's 
life  if  he  is  not  touched  with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmi 
ties? 

Repentance  is  the  word  that  looms  large  on  the 
poet's  horizon  after  the  Poe-Poem  episode. 


THE  POET  AT  THE  AGE  OF  TWENTY-EIGHT 


OLD  COUNTY  COURT  HOUSE 

First  home  of  the  Township  Lil.r.-iry 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  407 

"Pitilessly,  year  by  year 
From  the  farthest  past  to  here, 
Fate  had  fallen  like  a  blight 
On  the  blossoms  of  delight," 

and  he  realized  as  never  before  that  he  was  chiefly  re 
sponsible  for  that  fate.  Now  God  was  bending  down 
and  listening  to  his  prayers — and  the  prayer  of  his 
Lady  of  Tears.  Thus  it  seemed  he  "could  almost  see 
God's  face."  Had  he  left  no  other  record  of  himself 
than  this,  he  would  deserve  the  homage  of  fallen  hu 
manity  everywhere.  In  that  "storm  of  tears"  he  mas 
tered  himself  and  made  "his  torture  tributary  to  his 
will."  In  that  eventful  time  there  began  "the  faithful 
struggle  of  an  earnest  human  soul  towards  what  is 
good  and  best" — a  struggle  often  baffled  but  never 
abandoned.  Face  to  face  with  the  picture  of  his  woe 
he  clung  to  his  purpose.  He  resolved  "not  to  fade  away 
in  the  darkness  of  alcoholic  night" — and  he  kept  his 
word.  "The  Lord  is  my  shepherd,"  he  prayed ;  "surely 
goodness  and  mercy  shall  follow  me  all  the  days  of  my 
life" — and  they  did.  The  day  he  was  not  tempted 
to  drink,  which  he  so  fervently  anticipated,  never 
came;  but  the  day  did  come  when  he  could  resist  the 
temptation. 

Men  and  women  have  never  withheld  their  love  from 
the  man  who  rises  superior  to  misfortune.  If  while  ris 
ing  he  fall,  they  mantle  the  fall  with  their  compassion. 
If  he  have  a  besetting  sin,  their  interest  in  him  never 
flags  so  long  as  he  strives  manfully  to  detach  himself 
from  it.  "Who,"  asks  the  old  monk  Thomas  a  Kempis, 
"hath  a  harder  battle  to  fight  than  he  who  striveth  for 
self-mastery?"  After  all,  the  great  victory  is  to  whip 
the  offending  Adam  out  of  life,  and  this  Riley  pro 
ceeded  to  do,  beginning  with  a  strong  hand  the  fall  of 


408  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

1877.  Henceforth  as  hitherto,  the  people  were  with 
him.  They  gave  him  freely  of  their  sympathy  and 
love. 

It  is  refreshing  to  note  a  cause  of  the  people's  sym 
pathy.  In  those  notable  years  of  the  seventies,  a  re 
markable  man,  Robert  Collyer,  came  from  his  Chicago 
pulpit  to  Indiana  towns  with  his  lecture  on  "Clear 
Grit."  Few  speakers  surpassed  him  in  the  power  to 
mould  public  sentiment.  Riley  dearly  loved  him  be 
cause  of  his  large-hearted  incentives.  "Collyer  had 
been  through  the  crucible,"  said  Riley.  "He  knew  what 
it  meant  to  grapple  a  great  temptation  by  the  throat." 

"A  man  may  have  all  sorts  of  shining  qualities,"  said 
Collyer  in  the  lecture;  "he  may  be  as  handsome  as 
Apollo,  as  plausible  as  Mercury,  and  as  full  of  fight  as 
Mars,  and  yet  be  a  bit  of  mere  shining  paste — no  dia 
mond  at  all.  On  the  other  hand,  a  man's  faults  and 
failings  may  be  an  everlasting  regret  to  those  who  love 
him  best,  as  they  are  in  a  man  like  Robert  Burns.  But 
because  there's  Clear  Grit  in  him,  because  there's  a  bit 
of  manhood  running  through  his  life  as  grand  and  good 
as  ever  struggled  through  this  world  of  ours  toward  a 
better ;  a  heart  that  could  gather  everything  that  lives 
within  the  circle  of  its  mighty  sympathy,  from  a  mouse 
shivering  in  a  furrow,  to  a  saint  singing  in  Heaven; 
because  there's  a  heart  like  that  in  him,  we  cling  to  his 
knees,  we  will  not  let  him  go ;  sin-smitten,  but  mighty, 
manful  man,  as  he  is,  we  gather  him  into  our  heart, 
everyone  of  us,  and  love  him  with  an  everlasting  love." 

It  was  the  Burns  quality  in  Riley's  songs  and  the 
discovery  of  Clear  Grit  in  his  character  back  there  in 
the  latter  seventies  that  endeared  him  to  the  people  of 
Indiana.  They  had  found  a  man  who  was  touched  with 
a  feeling  for  their  infirmities.  Thus  finding  him  they 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  409 

were  not  unmindful  of  his  sorrows.  Nor  did  they  dis- 
prize  his  songs  because  he  was  the  victim  of  the  blue 
flame — • 

"For  his  tempted  and  wandering  feet, 
Were  the  songs  of  David  less  pure  and  sweet?" 

There  was  a  dragon  between  the  poet  and  the  Golden 
Fleece  but  that  did  not  deter  him.  He  would  have  the 
Fleece  at  all  hazards  and  it  was  this  determination  that 
deepened  the  people's  love.  They  would  not  "throw 
away  a  pineapple  because  it  had  a  rough  coat."  Here 
and  there  were  friends  who  had  witnessed  Riley's 
rapture  after  his  release  from  the  Beast,  as  he 
sometimes  called  the  blue  flame.  The  depth  of  grati 
tude  spiritualized  and  transfigured  in  his  face  was 
unforgetable.  It  was  evident  to  them  that  he  had  not 
yielded  to  the  tempter  without  inwardly  protesting 
against  him.  "Release  from  the  clutches  of  the  Beast," 
Riley  once  said,  "is  as  sweet  to  me  as  the  vision  of  peace 
to  a  nation  after  war.  I  dreamed  once  I  was  a  country 
besieged  by  a  foreign  foe.  I  never  could  tell  when  or 
where  the  foe  would  strike,  nor  could  I  ever  compass 
his  strength.  Sometimes  I  was  able  to  repel  him  at 
the  first  blow;  at  other  times  he  would  march  inland 
and  leave  desolation  and  grief  in  his  path  before  I 
was  able  to  defeat  him  and  drive  him  from  my  king 
dom.  Not  a  silly  dream  either,"  he  added.  "Man  en 
larged,  with  his  passions,  possibilities  and  perils,  is 
the  nation ;  and  the  nation  diminished  is  the  man." 

The  struggles  of  the  poet  with  adverse  fate  revealed 
him  a  man  of  uncommon  order.  They  manifested  the 
heroic — endurance  of  agonies.  He  had  capacities  for 
infinite  pain,  and,  growing  out  of  these,  fertility  of  re 
sources.  His  "sufferings  being  of  an  immortal  nature," 


410  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

his  knowledge  of  the  invisible  world — the  world  so  near 
us  we  can  not  comprehend  it — his  knowledge  of  that 
world  reached  far  beyond  the  ken  of  average  thought, 
and  that  meant  jewels  of  song  that  otherwise  had  not 
enhanced  the  joy  of  mankind. 

The  Poe  Poem  with  its  numerous  complications  was 
succeeded  by  what  Riley  called  an  "era  of  prosperity," 
a  period  of  two  years  wherein,  from  the  standpoint  of 
pure  genius,  he  did  his  greatest  work.  They  were  the 
second  and  third  years  of  his  "Prolific  Decade."  In 
cluding  good,  bad  and  indifferent,  one  thousand  poems 
are  credited  to  his  pen.  Two  hundred  of  these,  to 
gether  with  many  sketches  in  prose,  were  written  the 
two  years  following  September,  1877.  That  two-year 
period  of  untrammelled  endeavor  was  a  heavenly  con 
trast  to  the  ten  years  of  rough  traveling  that  preceded 
it.  He  was  blessed  with  the  smile  of  thirty  moons, 
"a  total  abstinence  turnpike,"  he  phrased  it,  "which 
glancing  back  over  he  found  as  true  as  the  sights 
of  a  level." 

Riley  never  credited  artificial  stimulants  with 
a  single  poem  or  story  although  there  were  occa 
sional  rumors  to  the  contrary.  "There  is  a 
theory  abroad,"  said  he,  "that  writers  succeed 
by  wooing  the  means  of  weakness  and  debility;  as 
Shakespeare  has  it,  by  applying  hot  and  rebellious 
liquors  in  their  blood.  They  succeed,  not  by  such  a 
course,  but  in  spite  of  it.  From  ancient  times,  men 
have  sacrificed  mind  and  money  at  the  shrine  of  Bac 
chus;  in  the  phrase  of  the  street,  become  vassals  of 
King  Booze ;  millions  have  gone  down  to  defeat ;  others, 
some  of  them  great  and  mighty  men,  have  fought  and 
won  their  way  to  fame.  They  did  not  win  because  of 
drink  but  in  spite  of  it.  Rum  does,  strangely  enough, 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  411 

lubricate  the  grooves  of  life,  and  under  its  gloze  the 
world  of  care  becomes  a  harmless  jest,  but  nothing 
worth  saving  was  ever  written  then.  A  maudlin  effort 
is  always  a  weak  effort.  I  can  imagine  a  poet  under  the 
pretense  of  intoxication,  reeling  to  the  door  of  a  friend 
at  midnight.  After  being  admitted  and  pitied,  I  hear 
him  say,  'Give  me  some  paper — I  want  to  write  a  poem.' 
The  next  morning  the  friend  relates  the  incident  to  his 
neighbors  and  says  the  fellow  wrote  'Bells  Jangled.'  He 
had  not  done  so.  The  pretender  had  thought  on  the 
poem  for  two  weeks  and  had  every  line  of  it  at  his 
command  when  he  entered  his  friend's  house.  Some 
authors  think  it  an  honor  to  have  the  fame  of  writing 
under  the  influence  of  wine.  I  want  no  such  reputation. 
A  man  must  be  in  his  right  mind  if  he  writes  poetry 
worth  reading.  Once  in  Indianapolis  there  lived  a 
poet  who  was  always  posing  as  one  who  wrote  poetry 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment.  It  was  not  true.  Previous 
ly  he  had  worked  for  days  on  a  poem  which  his  idolaters 
supposed  he  wrote  at  a  desk  in  ten  minutes  while  they 
looked  on  in  open-eyed  wonder." 

"When  you  reckon  up  nature,"  Myron  Reed  once 
said  to  Riley,  "it  is  not  fair  to  take  one  side 
only,  and  add  together  June  mornings,  and  bird 
songs,  and  rainbows,  and  the  gladness  of  the  grass 
and  grain.  There  is  another  very  serious  set  of 
items  that  must  come  in  somewhere.  The  air  of  the 
June  morning  that  plumes  the  feathers  of  the  robin  may 
be  twisted  before  night  into  a  cyclone.  We  are  in  a 
world  where  the  devil,  mountain  lions  and  silver-tipped 
bears  are  loose.  Our  enemies  are  not  in  a  cage.  Pleas 
ant  it  is  to  see  the  sun,  pleasant  to  lean  out  of  your 
window  on  moonlight  nights  to  hear  the  bugle  and  lis 
ten  to  'The  Campbells  Are  Coming' ;  but  to  be  a  Camp- 


412  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

bell  in  a  pair  of  wet  horse-hide  boots  wrinkled  at  the 
ankles — that  is  different.  It  is  a  slow  process,"  con 
cluded  Reed,  smiling  at  Riley's  dream  of  spotless  de 
portment,  "a  slow  process  training  a  river,  a  tiger  and 
a  man.  There  is  the  inclination  to  return  to  the  old 
way."  Mark  Twain  had  said,  "Habit  is  habit  and  not 
to  be  flung  out  of  the  window  by  any  man,  but  coaxed 
down  stairs  a  step  at  a  time." 

It  was  a  slow  process — the  formation  of  character. 
Resolutions  were  necessary  to  that  end,  and  back  there 
in  the  fall  of  1877  Riley  made  some.  He  got  a  cue 
from  the  saying  of  a  wise  old  Indianapolis  lawyer, 
Calvin  Fletcher,  who  had  also  been  a  successful  farmer, 
banker  and  railroad  promoter.  "If  I  have  business  re 
lations  with  a  man,"  said  the  lawyer,  "and  he  gets 
angry  at  me  or  does  not  act  right,  it  is  my  fault.  My 
business  is  to  see  that  everybody  with  whom  I  deal  shall 
do  right.  I  charge  myself  with  the  responsibility." 
Riley  promptly  saw  the  wisdom  of  the  law 
yer's  course.  If  I  am  not  upright  in  thought  and 
conduct,  he  reasoned,  it  is  my  fault.  If  I  do  not 
have  friends  and  health  it  is  my  fault.  If  others  do  not 
love  me  it  is  my  fault.  If  the  critics  do  not  praise  my 
poems,  if  I  do  not  reach  the  goal,  it  is  my  fault.  Thus 
he  made  a  map  of  the  country  through  which  he  was 
to  travel,  put  up  guide-posts,  all  pointing  to  a  rosy 
triumph.  And  it  was  good  for  him  to  do  so,  although 
he  did  not  always  travel  in  the  forward  direction. 
From  his  youth  he  had  had  a  sharp  eye  for  outward 
things,  but  he  had  been  a  hazy  student  of  himself. 
Now,  however,  self-study  became  an  absorbing  subject, 
the  unlocking  of  hidden  faculties,  the  searching  anal 
ysis  of  his  powers  and  their  relation  to  the  place  he 
was  to  occupy  in  the  world.  Knowledge  of  all  men 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  413 

meant,  first,  self-knowledge ;  the  control  of  others,  self- 
control,  and  so  forth. 

"Are  there  not  some  exceptions  to  this  doctrine  of 
personal  responsibility?"  asked  a  reporter  some  years 
after  Riley  had  made  his  resolution.  "Exceptions? 
Lord,  no!"  was  the  prompt  reply.  "It  will  work  all 
the  way  up  the  scale.  If  I  am  not  President  of  the 
United  States,  it  is  my  fault."  There  were  some  ex 
ceptions  but  the  conquering  spirit  of  YOUTH  in  the  poet 
would  not  tolerate  them. 

Perhaps  the  most  valuable  lesson  that  Riley  learned 
from  the  Poe-Poem  experience  was  the  wise  con 
struction  he  put  on  the  use  of  adversity.  "If  some 
misfortune  can  befall  him — all  will  be  well."  This 
seems  a  heartless  remark  and  some  can  not  forgive 
Emerson  for  making  it.  Riley  saw  wisdom  in  it. 
Through  the  mist  of  tears  he  perceived  that  the  ugly 
and  venomous  toad  we  call  adversity  does  truly  wear 
a  precious  jewel  in  its  head.  There  was  such  a  thing 
as  thriving  on  misfortune.  "By  going  wrong  things 
had  come  right."  A  friend  wrote  to  ask  if  he  was  dis 
couraged  over  the  "Leonainie  Downfall." 

"Discouraged?  God  bless  you,  no,"  was  the  homely 
reply.  "It  has  fattened  me  like  a  Thanksgiving 
turkey." 

Now  that  he  has  surmounted  what  for  a  while  seemed 
an  insurmountable  obstacle,  it  may  be  said  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  word  that  Riley  was  a  poet.  He  had  a 
new  conception  of  his  mission.  Since  his  vision,  his 
attitude  had  been  that  of  a  listener.  "In  hours  of  in 
spiration,"  he  said,  "I  was  a  lover  listening  to  an  utter 
ance  that  flowed  in  syllables  like  dewdrops  from  the 
lips  of  flowers."  The  listening  attitude  was  to  con 
tinue,  but  he  was  not  only  to  listen,  he  was  to 


414  JAMES  WHITCOMB  RILEY 

work.  It  was  one  thing  to  be  favored  with  the  sylla 
bles,  another  and  equally  important  thing  to  seize 
them  and  record  them.  They  had  to  be  caressed 
and  polished  and  occasionally  hammered  that  the 
reader  might  have,  in  a  measure,  the  sense  of  beauty 
that  ravished  the  poet's  heart  when  he  first  heard 
them.  After  the  syllables  had  been  recorded  he  had  to 
set  the  poem  up,  and  then  "walk  around  it,"  he  said, 
"as  Benjamin  Harrison  walked  around  a  law  case." 
Of  a  poem  that  had  required  a  day  and  a  night's  effort 
he  remarked,  "you  can  track  me  round  it  a  hundred 
times."  Poems  were  his  children — good — bad — in 
different.  To  curb,  train  and  direct  them  demanded 
the  patience  of  an  educator.  When  in  a  jocular  mood 
Riley  was  wont  to  call  an  unfinished  poem  a  "Caira- 
wan."  At  such  times  he  would  play  the  Dwarf  in 
Christmas  Stories  to  perfection :  "Ladies  and  Gentle 
men,"  he  would  say  when  taking  leave  of  friends  to 
work  on  a  poem,  "the  Little  Man  will  now  walk  three 
times  around  the  Cairawan  and  retire  behind  the  cur 
tain."  Thus  he  sometimes  uttered  the  words  on  enter 
ing  his  room  at  night.  The  next  morning  there  would 
be  a  new  poem  on  his  table. 

And  here  also  the  reader  comes  to  the  exit  of  the 
Little  Man  in  this  volume.  Having  been  before  the 
footlights  for  a  season — not  from  any  wish  of  his  own 
but  in  response  to  the  call  of  his  friends — he  looks 
back  a  moment  on  the  rare  pictures  of  his  boyhood  and 
forward  for  a  glimpse  of  his  future  and  then  makes  his 
bow  and  retires  behind  the  curtain. 

It  is  the  first  year  of  his  "Prolific  Decade"  and  the 
last  day  of  the  year— 1877.  The  Little  Man  is  twenty- 
eight  years  old.  As  his  favorite  Ik  Marvel  wrote, 
"Clouds  were  weaving  the  summer  into  the  season  of 


WEATHERING  THE  STORM  415 

autumn;  and  YOUTH  was  rising  from  dashed  hopes 
into  the  stature  of  a  man."  There  being  little  doubt 
among  his  friends,  less  in  himself,  and  none  in  the 
mind  of  the  Calm  Angel,  that  he  is  a  poet,  he  settles 
down  to  his  work  in  Greenfield.  The  "wanderlust" 
calls  to  him  in  vain.  The  past  with  its  cloud  and  sun 
shine  is  like  a  story.  In  a  way,  it  seems  years  back  to 
his  vision  although  it  is  less  than  twenty  moons.  It 
was  a  long  way  back  to  the  old  County  Court  House 
with  its  Township  Library,  and  the  Shoe-Shop  where 
he  received  his  first  impulse  to  a  literary  life — farther 
yet  back  to  the  little  willow  brook  of  rhymes  that  war 
bled  through  his  native  town,  a  score  and  more  years 
back  to  the  day  in  childhood  when  he  and  his  Uncle 
Mart  ascended  the  stream  and  lifted  the  curtains  on  its 
winding  scenery — a  long,  tortuous  way  it  was  back  to 
these  mile-stones. 

At  last  he  has  fairly  set  sail  on  a  literary  sea,  and 
for  him  that  sea  has  the  charms  that  envelop  the  mari 
ner  on  his  first  voyage  to  foreign  lands.  Sky  and 
atmosphere  are  brimmed  and  overflowing.  All  things 
are  elate  with  buoyancy.  There  is  the  breath  of  morn 
ing  in  the  sea  air.  Before  him  in  the  hazy  kingdoms 
of  the  unknown  are  the  Fortunate  Isles  and  somewhere 
beyond  them — 

"The  shores  of  an  eternity 
In  the  calms  of  Paradise." 


INDEX 


INDEX 

Abbott,  Emma,  317. 

Adelphian  Band,  166. 

Adjustable  Lunatic,  motif  of,  255. 

Alcott,  Louisa  May,  81. 

Aldrich,  Thomas  Bailey,  314. 

Alleghany  Mountains,  1,  6. 

Along  the  Banks  of  Brandywine,  63. 

Amendment,  The,  Riley's  school  paper,  68,  367. 

American  Patriot,  The,  16. 

Anderson  Democrat,  333,  342,  excerpt  from,  351-2. 

Anderson  Mystery,  The,  399. 

Arabian  Nights,  27,  73. 

Argonauts  of  '49,  86. 

At  Last,  225. 

Autumn  Leaf,  An,  228. 

Anecdotes :  Benson  Out-Bensoncd,  356-58 ;  Bill  at  Greenfield  Hotel, 
216;  cake  of  soap,  26;  creditors,  79;  Discouraging  Model, 
124;  drowning  painter,  149;  Dying  Soldier,  56-57;  end  of 
Riley's  career  as  musician,  165;  end  of  Riley's  career  as 
violinist,  178;  first  boots,  25;  first  suit  of  clothes,  182; 
grandfather's  book,  10;  leaving  the  farm,  69-70; 
Leonainie,  368-400;  Lily,  49;  McCrillus,  Dr.,  engages  Riley, 
108;  Martin  Riley  runs  away,  19;  Out  to  Old  Aunt  Mary's, 
motif,  38 ;  Peg  Woffington,  260-61 ;  picnic  of  the  Adelphians, 
166-68;  progress  of  South  Bend,  143;  Riley,  Andrew,  sells 
corn,  7;  Riley  and  Anna  Mayflower,  161-63;  Riley  and  the 
irate  farmer,  132-34 ;  Riley  as  Bible  seller,  74 ;  Riley  as  blind 
painter,  135-36;  Riley  as  editor  of  Greenfield  Criterion,  66; 
Riley  as  painter  of  signs  and  houses,  74-78 ;  Riley  as  secre 
tary  of  the  Sunday-school,  90;  Riley  at  the  bar,  181-88; 
Riley's  choice  of  profession,  212 ;  Riley's  first  valentine,  223 ; 
Riley  in  Magic  Oil  Laboratory,  211;  Riley's  intuition,  244- 
45;  Riley,  McClanahan  and  Hell,  152;  reading  Robinson 
Crusoe  in  school,  50-60;  Reciting  Casablanca,  55;  Riley 
sends  letters  and  poems  to  Longfellow,  234-36,  318;  Riley 
skating,  61 ;  Riley  takes  his  first  poem  to  the  Greenfield 
Commercial,  221-22;  Riley's  trip  with  his  father  to  Indian 
apolis,  58-59 ;  side-show  at  Cadiz,  117 ;  Thanksgiving  Day  at 
Henchley's,  359-64. 

Bailey,  Montgomery,  225. 
Ballad,  A,  224. 
Barnett,  War,  169. 
Bartholomew  County,  15. 
Battle  of  LoveWs  Pond,  221. 
Bedford,  Pa.,  6. 

419 


420 


INDEX 


Beecher,  Henry  Ward,  363. 

Benson,  Luther,  266,  356. 

Benson  Out-Bensoned,  152. 

Billings,  Josh,  172. 

Bonny  Brown  Quail,  63. 

Brandy  wine  Creek,  14,  40,  62. 

Brightwood,  335. 

British  Books,  influence  on  Riley,  93-5. 

Brook  Song,  24. 

Bull,  Ole,  Norwegian  violinist,  170-75. 

Burlington  Hawkeye,  349. 

Cabin  Creek,  12,  14. 

Capt.  Kidd,  60. 

Chatterton,  Thomas,  367. 

Child,  Lydia  Maria,  172. 

Child  World,  The,  31,  159. 

Choate,  Joseph  H.,  125. 

Cincinnati,  4. 

Clay,  Henry,  8. 

Clayton,  L.  H.,  78. 

Collyer,  Robert,  172,  245,  408. 

Cooley,  George,  240. 

Country  Pathway,  A,  233,  366. 

Craqueodoom,  339. 

Croan,  William  M.,  355,  361,  393. 

Crooked  Jim,  63. 

Curtis,  George  W.,  171. 

Danbury  News,  225,  227,  316,  349. 

Dave  Field,  153. 

Delaware  County,  10. 

Denison  Hotel,  58. 

Destiny,  A,  229. 

Dickens,  Charles,  4,  5,  11,  64,  98,  99,  101,  204-206. 

Duck  Creek  Jabberwock,  339. 

Earlhamite,  The,  334. 
Edyrn,  217-218. 
Empty  Song,  An.  298-299. 
Ethell,  J.  W.,  145,  384. 

Fame :  130 ;  quoted,  236,  307,  320. 

Family  Friend,  16. 

Farmer  Whipple — Bachelor,  114-226. 

Fitch,  John,  284. 

Flames  and  Ashes,  233. 

Flaxman,  John,  276. 

Fletcher,  Calvin,  412. 

Fragment,  quoted,  68. 

Frog,  The,  39. 

Funny  Little  Fellow,  324. 

Fuseli,  Henry,  254. 


INDEX  421 


George,  Henry,  314. 

George  Mullen's  Confession,  339. 

Gill,  W.  F.,  383. 

Golden  Girl:  letter  to  Riley  about  OH  Sweetheart  of  Mine,  267; 

273,  279,  283-311,  370. 
Gooding,  Judge  David  S.,  41. 
Graphic  Company,  132-157. 
Graphics,  144,  225. 
Great  Pedee,  17. 

Greenfield,  14,  15,  17,  19,  30,  41,  62,  82. 

Greenfield  Commercial:  Riley  as  a  musician,  177;  220,  221,  316. 
Greenfield  Democrat,  77,  215,  322. 
Greenfield  News,  114,  226,  227. 
Greenfield  Reveille,  16. 
Greenfield  Spectator,  16. 
Guymon  House,  79. 

Hancock  County,  82. 

Happy  Bells,  368. 

Harris,  Lee  O.,  52,  62-66,  238,  275,  314,  316,  32S. 

Harte,  Bret,  64,  88   143,  190. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  314. 

Hay,  John :  5,  50,  160,  225 ;  letter  to  Riley,  282. 

Hearth  and  Home,  229. 

Hedley,  James,  255. 

Henderson,  John  O.,  371-72. 

Her  Beautiful  Hands,  quoted,  297. 

His  Mother,  quoted,  190. 

Holland,  J.  G.,  172. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  314. 

Hough,  Judge  William  R.,  39. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  3,  375. 

Hunt,  Emily,  14. 

//  I  Knew  What  Poets  Know,  267. 

Indiana,  4,  6,  7,  8. 

Indianapolis  Herald,  48,  234,  277. 

Indianapolis  Journal,  274. 

Indianapolis  Mirror,  223. 

Indianapolis  Sentinel,  172,  275. 

Ingersoll,  Robert  G.,  329. 

In  the  Dark,  296. 

Ireland,  William,  367. 

Iron  Horse,  The,  123. 

Irving,  Washington :  as  a  lawyer,  183 ;  influence  on  Riley,  90. 

Jay  Whit,  23,  25,  218. 

Jefferson,  Joseph,  61. 

Joe  Biggsby's  Proposal,  quoted,  165. 

Johnny  Appleseed,  11,  77. 

Johnny,  a  short  story  by  Riley,  224. 

Jordan,  Mrs.  D.  M.,  378. 


422  INDEX 

Keefer,  Almon,  34,  86. 
Kingry,  George,  61. 
Kinnard,  William,  361. 
Kinney,  Coates,  363. 
Kokomo  Dispatch,  371-72. 
Kokomo  Republican,  227. 
Krout,  Mary  H.,  268. 

Lacy,  John  W.,  66. 

Lafayette,  Gen.,  8. 

Lake  Erie,  4. 

Last  Waltz,  quoted,  168. 

Lavater,  254. 

Leloine,  228. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  12,  30,  80,  81,  106. 

Lines  in  a  Letter  Enclosing  a  Picture,  quoted,  296. 

Little  Brandywine,  63. 

Little  Nell,  72,  98,  199. 

Longfellow,  Henry  Wadswortb  :  10,  33,  65;  influence  on  Riley,  103- 

104,   174,  221,   269,   274,   282,   310,   314,   315,    316;    letter   to 

Riley,  321,  322,  324,  327-28,  363. 
Lost  Kiss,  The,  286. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  27,  181,  252. 

McClanahan,  James,  108,  145,  288,  308. 

McClure  Township  Library,  91-94. 

McCrillus,  Dr.  S.  B.,  105-31. 

McDowell,  Babe,  229. 

McGuffey,  William  H.,  102-03. 

McManus,  S.  B.,  149. 

Mack,  F.  H.,  145. 

Man  of  Many  Parts,  339. 

Man's  Devotion,  223. 

Marvel,  Ik,  229,  233,  246,  414. 

Masonic  Hall  of  Greenfield,  62. 

Mass  Convention,  15. 

Master  Humphrey's  Clock,  5. 

Maud  Muller,  burlesque,  235. 

Metcalf,  Stephen,  392. 

Metropolitan  Theatre,  260. 

Mill,  John  Stuart,  314. 

Millikan,  Rhoda  Houghton,  90-91,  218,  239. 

Mississinewa  River,  9-11,  121-22,  234. 

Mitchell,  Donald  G.,  316. 

Mitchell,  S.  Weir,  255. 

Mockery,  223. 

Moonlight  in  the  Forest,  63. 

Morelnnd,  George,  influence  upon  Riley,  154-55. 

Morton,  Oliver  P..  30. 

Mountains  of  the  Moon,  3. 

Myers,  Eudora  Kate,  403. 


INDEX  423 

Myers,  Jessie  F.,  398. 

Myers,  Capt.  W.  R.,  360. 

My  Jolly  Friend's  Secret,  225. 

National  Hotel,  16. 

National  Road,  31,  50,  86,  160. 

Neghborly  Poems,  354. 

Neill,  Mrs.  Frances,  35. 

Newcastle,  82. 

Newcastle  Mercury,  333. 

New  Garden,  9. 

Now  We  Can  Sleep,  Mother,  337. 

Nursery  Rhymes  for  Children,  128. 

Nye,  Bill,  53,  188,  233. 

Old  Fashioned  Roses,  326. 

Old  Sweetheart  of  Mine,  267. 

Old  Swimmin'  Hole,  77,  80. 

Old  Wish,  motif,  161. 

Orlie  Wild,  369. 

Out  to  Old  Aunt  Mary's,  38. 

Overland  Route,  The,  87. 

Over  the  Hills  to  the  Poor  Farm,  355. 

Pamona,  11. 

Parker,  B.  S.,  265,  323. 

Pence,  John  W.,  399. 

Peter  Bell,  61. 

Philiper  Flcuh,  218-19. 

Phillips,  Charles,  387. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  172. 

Pierson,  William  M.,  66. 

Pioneer  Days :  activities,  5 ;  characteristics  of  people,  1-6 ;  food,  7 ; 

land  conditions,  2-3 ;  philosophy  of  the  pioneer,  4. 
Plain  Sermons,  225. 
Plank  Road,  19. 
Poet's  Realm,  217. 
Poet's  Wooing,  223,  225. 
Post-Gazette,  221. 

Queen  City,  8. 
Queen  Victoria,  8. 

Randolph  County,  6,  7,  9,  10. 

Railway  Guide,  401. 

Reed,  Myron,  61,  70,  95,  218,  248,  269,  271,  278,  274,  317,  366,  390, 

411. 

Rhymes  of  Childhood1,  354. 
Richards,  Samuel,  360,  384. 
Richmond  Independent,  334. 
Ridgeville,  9. 
Riley:  family,  6-9.     Mother,  Elizabeth  Marine,  5,  8,  9,  10,  11,  12; 

character,  13;  marriage,  14,  16,  17,  21;  death,  71;  influence 


424  INDEX 

on  Riley,  72-73.  Father,  Reuben  Riley,  6;  description,  12, 
13,  15,  17,  20;  in  politics,  30;  at  war,  79,  105-07;  ambition 
for  J.  W.,  181-82.  Grandfather,  Andrew  Riley,  7.  Grand 
mother,  Margaret  Sleek  Riley,  6,  10.  Brothers  and  sisters: 
Elva  May  Riley,  32;  Humboldt  Alexander  Riley,  32;  John 
Andrew  Riley,  31;  Martha  Celestia  Riley,  31;  Mary  Eliza 
beth  Riley,  32.  Uncle  Martin  Riley,  21,  22,  23,  24,  26,  28 ;  in 
fluence  on  Riley's  imagination,  34,  86,  87.  Marine  ancestry  : 
occupation,  9;  grandfather,  John  Marine,  8,  9;  grandmother, 
Fanny  Jones  Marine,  9,  11,  13.  James  Whitcomb  Riley: 
birth,  21;  association  with  Dr.  McCrillus,  108;  association 
with  Home  Sewing  Machine  Co.,  148 ;  association  with  Wiz 
ard  Oil  Co.,  193-215 ;  description  of  Riley  by  J.  B.  Townsend, 
212-14;  education,  33-38,  39,  42,  50-58,  60-67;  early  reading, 
90;  103;  enters  law,  188;  enters  newspaper  business,  227;  on 
friendship,  250;  growth  in  imagination,  28;  in  poetic  spirit, 
203-10;  influence  of  Forty-Niners  on  Riley,  87-89;  love  of 
nature,  40-47,  50,  51 ;  love  of  music,  159,  170;  as  lawyer,  181- 
192;  as  musician,  158-180;  philosophy  in  early  life,  84-87; 
publishes  first  poem,  58;  on  private  theatricals,  225;  Riley, 
McClanahan  Advertising  Co.,  132 ;  Riley's  vision,  272, 

Ripest  Peach  is  on  the  Highest  Tree,  218. 

Robinson  Crusoe,  59. 

Rockingham,  N.  C.,  8. 

Romney,  207. 

Rushville,  74. 

Same  Old  Story  Told  Again,  quoted,  220. 

Saxhorn  Band,  159. 

Say  Farewell  and  Let  Me  Go,  308. 

Say  Something  to  Me,  298. 

Schoolboy  Silhouettes,  48,  51,  59. 

Schoolmaster  and  Songmaster,  62. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  6,  64. 

Shelbyville,  82. 

Shower,  The,  233,  274. 

Silent  Victors,  295,  353. 

Singing  Pilgrims,  The,  209-10. 

Skinner,  J.  J.,  197. 

Snow,  Tom,  70,  96-102. 

Some  Observations  on  Decoration  Day,  353. 

Song  of  Parting,  298. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  35. 

Stedman,  Edmund  Clarence,  384. 

Stockford  and  Blowney  Co.,  143. 

Stony  Creek,  7,  12,  14. 

Story  of  Life  in  the  Woods,  45. 

Strange  Young  Man,  motif,  87,  186. 

Summer  Afternoon,  225. 

Swing,  David,  80. 

Tailholt,  79. 


INDEX  425 


Tales  of  the  Ocean,  34. 

Tanglewood  Tales,  influence  on  Riley,  87. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  13. 

Test  of  Low,  339. 

Thanksgiving  Day  at  Henchley's,  quoted,  359. 

Thorpe's  Pond,  24,  45,  61. 

That  Little  Dorg,  225. 

Thompson,  Maurice,  315. 

Thornburg,  William  A.,  10. 

Tilt  the  Cup,  quoted,  169. 

Tom  Johnson's  Quit,  155. 

To  the  Judge,  185. 

Townsend,  James  B.,  212-14. 

Tradin'  Joe,  226. 

Transfigured,  quoted,  72. 

Tress  of  Hair,  298. 

Trillpipe's  Boy  on  Spiders,  339. 

Tune,  quoted,  158. 

Twain,  Mark,  4,  58,  62,  70,  81,  88,  125,  172,  314,  412. 

Unawangawawa,  339. 
Union  City,  197. 
Unionport,  14. 
Upper  Sandusky,  204-05. 

Vision  of  Summer,  quoted,  274,  324. 

Walden  Pond,  45. 

Walton,  Ike,  274. 

Wash  Lowry's  Reminiscence,  339. 

Watterson,  Henry,  353. 

Wayne  County,  9. 

When  My  Dreams  Come  True,  294. 

Whitcomb,  James,  21,  30. 

White  Man's  Flood,  1,  5. 

Whitmore,  Mrs.  H.  E.,  127. 

Whitmore,  James,  145. 

Wilfer,  Rumty,  69. 

Willard,  Archibald,  painter,  83. 

Willie,  or  Prior  to  Miss  Belle's  Appearance,  354. 

Windsor,  12. 

Wordsworth,  27. 

Wrangdillion,  339. 


LAST 


THISE      ^jtfCPED  ***  ^^ 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  -U.C.  BERKELEY 


'-.  •  -0; 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


